Florence hasn’t even been on my bucketlist for too long. The city came to me in a dream and somehow I felt I needed to go there as soon as I could. So when we planned a trip for the summer and decided we wanted to go to Rome, we obviously had to go to Florence as well.

And wow. The city is probably the prettiest I’ve ever been to. I dare say it’s prettier than Paris or Rome. Whereas Rome breathed ancient history, Florence felt young and vibrant with it’s colorful houses, lovely food, expensive stores and the most gorgeous architecture I have ever seen.

Saturday morning, we packed our suitcases and headed towards the train station. Let’s start this post with a tip: If you’re in Rome and you plan to visit another city, buy train tickets beforehand because they are expensive if you’re buying them at the train station. We didn’t know that, so we payed quite a lot for our tickets.

Anyhoo, an hour and a half later, we arrived in Europe’s prettiest city. We headed towards our hotel, checked in, and while I freshened up in our room, boyfriend wanted to explore the hotel. He texted me: ‘Come up to the roof, you’re gonna LOVE this’, so I quickly went upstairs. And this was the view we got. Our hotel, Hotel Croce Di Malta, had a rooftop bar that offered us the most beautiful view of the city, with the Duomo right in the middle. I was instantly in love with the city.

We decided to take a walk along the Arno in search for a place to have lunch. We wouldn’t cross the river today, but it was amazing to see the colorful houses and the mountains in the background, just at the other side of the water.

We didn’t have a plan. There were a few things that I put on my list, some museums, some statues, but on our first day, we just wandered about, getting the feel of the city and just see what we ran into. It’s so lovely to start a day in a new city like that. On foot, just wandering, just see where you’ll end up.

And we ended up at Oggi where we had an amazing pizza with tuna, sunkissed tomatoes and pistachios. I was curious about the combination at first but it totally worked and it was absolutely delicious. Big recommendation! I really loved the food and the atmosphere. The place was packed with plants and lights and all of it just worked.

After that delicious pizza, we set out to explore the city some more, not knowing that we would already get to cross some things off our lists. What I already loved about Florence, is that there were little restaurants everywhere and the outsides were so beautifully decorated, they were hard to miss. One thing’s for sure: It’s not hard to find a place to have lunch or dinner in this city!

It wasn’t long until we came onto the Loggia del mercato Nuovo, otherwise known as Loggia del Porcelino. Every day you can find a market here where you can buy souvenirs (more expensive than in the stores) and bags, but the main attraction of the square is this statue of a boar. Pet him on the nose so he’ll bring you luck!

But who would need luck in a city as pretty as this one? In the upcoming days we would find another statue of David, marvel at the gorgeous details of the Duomo, have an even better pizza, visit the Uffizi and went on a quest to save the Medici family. Stay tuned for more stories!