Wednesday, 11 September 2019 – Florence: Secrets, Steps and Slightly Misread Schedules

For our last day in Florence, I had the bright idea to book a midday “Inferno” tour at Palazzo Vecchio, retracing the footsteps of Dan Brown’s plot twists. Except… turns out midday didn’t mean the tour started at noon—it meant lunch started then. So while I was pacing the square at 12:20 wondering where everyone was, they were probably enjoying their first course. Whoopsie.

The actual tour kicked off at 2pm, and to be fair—it was worth the wait. We were led into Palazzo Vecchio through a secret door (which made us feel very “Robert Langdon”) and guided through a maze of hidden staircases, secret passages, and behind-the-scenes access to some truly jaw-dropping rooms. Between the history, art, and secret codes tucked into the architecture, it was part mystery novel, part museum magic.

But that wasn’t all.

To finish the day—and nearly myself off—I climbed the Campanile di Giotto. That’s 414 steps up, 414 down, and somewhere around 4,000 in the middle if you go by how my legs felt. Every 150 steps or so, there’s a little platform to stop and reassess your life choices. But the view from the top? Worth every drop of sweat. Florence unfolded in every direction—rooftops, domes, and the kind of cityscape that makes you forget your legs feel like jelly.

We wrapped up the day, and our time in Florence, completely exhausted and thoroughly enchanted. So many things left unseen, unvisited, and uneaten—clearly, we’ll have to come back.

Just… maybe fewer stairs next time.