Going to Italy solved all my life problems.
When my friend, Casey, a favorite travel partner of mine (who I am had not seen since my birthday, February of 2019 in Tahoe), invited me to join her in Europe for an extension of her work trip, I couldn’t say no. With not a ton going on in my life, and frankly, feeling in a bit of a funk, it seemed like the perfect fall (and life) getaway that I badly needed. I immediately booked a plane ticket from Seattle to Paris to Florence, and two days later I left for a two-and-a-half week European adventure. Italy was Casey’s idea as she had never been before and had just come from spending time in London and Paris. She had her sights set on Florence and who was I to argue? She booked us an Airbnb for 6 days and we planned to take day trips from there to explore beyond the city. Then we would go back to Paris together, stay a few more days for Casey’s birthday and I would continue on for awhile on my own. I love a solo adventure afterall.

In Italy, Covid precautions were numerous and extensive. Italy makes all tourists from outside the EU get tested every 72 hours, even if vaccinated (they don’t trust those paper vax cards, since they have digital ones in the EU which are harder to fake, and have intense tracking, who can blame them?). But they make testing super convenient, fast, cheap and easy and have it in every pharmacy on every corner (what a concept!). They have an easy QR code system with the Green Pass app, which we showed everywhere. Plus, we wore masks everywhere (except in photos 😃 ), along with everyone else. It felt very safe (this was right before the Omnicron variant).

Here’s my photo diary from our few days wandering around Florence. We got super lucky and the city was totally empty (combination of shoulder/off season and Covid). The weather was a perfect 65-70 degrees everyday so we were able to walk everywhere. A few restaurants were closed for the season, but nothing we missed. We had a magical experience in the Duomo by ourselves at 6pm, yep just us and 1 security guard, in the entire Duomo. How unheard of is that? In general, we followed the Goop guide to Florence, because, as we found to be true, Gwyneth knows best. Where she says we eat, tour and shop, we went, and were never disappointed. We recommend!