“A journey of a thousand miles begins with one single step.”

A few nights before I left my life in the United States, before I found myself nervous and anxious and hopeful, sitting on a plane headed to the romantic, Renaissance city of Florence, I said goodbye to my old students and received encouragements and warm embraces from my closest friends and family.
I was moving to Italy with a multitude of unanswered questions, a path with no physical end, except to live, learn and stumble along the uneven cobble stone streets of the Italy I had so many years dreamed of meeting on intimate terms.
On September 1st 2004 the adventure began.
Other than studying Italian at an Italian language school every morning, my life in Florence from day one was open to an infinite number of possibilities. A city wealthy with Renaissance culture, museums, churches and hidden fortresses full of famously historical pieces of artwork and architecture, with a culture lively and active. I wasted no time, finding a job, wandering all ends of the city, attending concerts and discovering open-air markets. I eventually joined a choir after hearing a concert in San Lorenzo one warm, summer evening. I enjoyed the golden evenings from my terrace of my apartment on popular Via Calzaioli, as the bells of the Duomo marked the evening. Street bands and opera singers, endless, amicable, Italian chatter, motorini, bicycle bells, dogs barking or the undecipherable, excited jabber of every language fathomable. This is my Florence.
Within one month I had already visited Santa Maria Novella, San Lorenzo, the Duomo, and Baptistry, Brancacci Chapel with Massaccio’s frescoes, Orsanmichele, Capelli Medici, Boboli Gardens, Galleria Patina at the Pitti Palace, San Miniato and San Romolo in Fiesole and the artists studios of Oltrarno. Seduced to try a new flavor of gelato a few times a week, steer through the crowds of the mercato centrale, join an Italian game of cards at an outdoor café in Piazza Repubblica, stroll the Gucci and Armani-style streets surrounding Piazza Signoria towards the immense halls of the Uffizi, taste Gilli’s famous chocolates, wander the long streets near the Arno and gaze at the golden temptations of the Ponte Vecchio, sketch Michelangelo and imagine how Brunelleschi dreamt to design that expansive dome.
This is my Florence. And I have documented every minute of it that I possible can, to share this life with all those who follow and partake in my stories and my adventure, perhaps to find themselves on a path of a thousand miles one day.