Yeah, you could do Florence in three days. Three’s enough to hit all the major museums if you book ahead. Two, if you wake up at dawn and walk for fourteen hours straight. In one day you can walk the entire city, but you can’t stop for pictures and you have to eat all your meals standing up.
Of course, you could turn your trip into a week. Yeah, you could do Florence in a week. You could get a metro pass at that point. You could stop for a spritz and really look David in the eyes among the sea of cell phones all taking the same picture. You could do a month, even. By then you should be ordering your coffee in Italian. Al banco, always. Being alone feels more real when you’re sitting. You could get a job as a tour guide for people doing the city in a couple of hours. You could carry around a yellow umbrella and point out the fact that people mistakenly call it “Venus on the Half-Shell” and this is incorrect and has never been correct. You could find a bench at the Uffizi and watch as people admire her impossibly perfect proportions and make this same mistake. You might walk around and feel as though your own birth could happen at any second. You could befriend some locals who take you out dancing one night. You could look around and notice no one else in the room was born in a year that starts with “19” and when you try to sing along you are really just faking. You could wake up on another bench without them. You could decide to rent an apartment from an older woman who takes pity on your bad Italian and round face. You could have dinner at her apartment where she introduces you to her grandson. You could visit a vineyard together, do it in a day. You could kiss as the sun sets in the little red car you rented. You could lie to each other because it feels good to say things like “sempre”.
—Published 15th of September 2025
About Sydney Maguire
Sydney Maguire is a writer from Seattle, WA, currently based in Minneapolis. Her work has been featured in Bruiser Mag, Jeopardy Magazine, and others. You can find her on Instagram: @sydneyymaguire