Florence: Signage

Even after having more than a year to reflect on my Italy trip, it's impossible to pick a favorite of the five cities my uncle took me to. However after five days in Rome, I do remember thinking upon arriving in Florence that I was going to like it even more than I did Rome. I was right, although it's unfair to compare two (or five) very different cities. Florence is smaller and felt intimate and carefully curated, which was a nice tonic to the overwhelming amount of very important things to see in Rome.

Florence probably had the best signage of the five, a category that saw a lot of robust competition during the course of our trip. Every hotel, gelateria, restaurant and store had a lovely sign, most of which comprised individual letters, stacked vertically and suspended perpendicular to the building.

No matter what they said—I could figure out most, but I don't speak Italian—or which way you saw them from, they were all wonderful. There were illuminated letters, neon scripts and such a lovely variety of colors, arrangements and typefaces that I was constantly stopping to photograph run-of-the-mill shop signs like the big, embarrassing tourist I was/am. I know everything sounds exotic and better in a language that's not your own, but it's very hard not to prefer "Coiffeurs Pour Dames" over Best Cuts.

Pesaro, Italy

Every morning one of the first things I do is check the Timehop app because I love to look back on things I've done. It's why I take so many photos and why I started blogging (and why pre-Internet, I was an obsessive journal-writer and scrapbook-maker). One year ago yesterday, I got back from my first-ever European trip (to Italy) and I realized I've never really written a lot about it. When I returned I was so overwhelmed by the volume of photos I had taken and the insane amount of things I had seen that it took some time to process it all.

We ended our three-week trip in Pesaro, a beach town on the coast of the Adriatic that was unlike any of the other cities we had seen (Rome, Florence, Venice and Ravenna). We were there for the Rossini opera festival, which was lovely, but the beaches were completely unreal. Somehow I had in my head a vision of candy-colored, striped-umbrella-laden Italian beaches and Pesaro turned out to be that, and so much more.

Every beach had a different, charming name and a unique, brightly colored umbrella. I immediately became obsessed with all of the stripes and bright colors—everything from walkways to chairs was color-coded. Beach Wanda won the imaginary title of "Miss Beach" that my uncle and I invented, but they were all so wonderful it was hard to pick a favorite. Taken as a whole, the beaches were total sensory overload—not to mention the Italian bathing suits, or lack thereof—and I was constantly overwhelmed in the best possible way.

Away from the beaches, Pesaro was also architecturally different from the other places we'd been. The buildings felt more modern, but still had a decaying 70s vintage vibe. Compared to the ancient ruins and centuries-old churches we had grown used to seeing, the slightly abandoned, urban feel of Pesaro was a nice change of pace. With beach towns as charming as Pesaro, I finally understood why all the Italians were noticeably absent from the cities we had visited.

Venice: Signage

If I was forced to pick a favorite of the five cities we visited in Italy this summer, I would have to say it was Venice. Of course Venice is a totally cliché answer to that question, but everything you've heard or thought about it is true—it's completely magical. My first thought when we arrived was "it's exactly as beautiful as everyone says."

One thing that I hadn't really expected, but was pleased to discover, was the amazing signage that I came across at nearly every turn. Venice doesn't have street signs (or any real standardized way of navigating) so most of the directional signage is painted on the sides of buildings or built into the streets themselves in the form of beautiful mosaics.

Of course, not really knowing the language makes any sign feel even more romantic and special—signs for restaurants, camera stores and gelaterias were all beautiful and unique. The Foto Blitz turned out to be a teeny tiny souvenir store that sold postcards and stamps—not exactly the time warp that I had in mind when I started following all of the vintage signage. I imagine that most of the photo developing signs are leftover from a time when everyone was traveling with film and didn't want to wait to return home before seeing their snapshots.

Even the hand-painted signs above the prison cells in the bottom of the Doge's Palace were incredible, proving that the most unforgiving places can benefit from expert signage. On our last day in Venice, I found myself photographing a sign only to have my uncle point out that it was for a funeral home, which of course made me appreciate it even more.

Photos of People Taking Photos

Yikes. It's been a while.

I spent more than half of August seeing (nearly) every single famous piece of artwork, extravagant church and ruin that Italy has to offer, courtesy of my amazing Uncle Steve who was my travel companion, guide and historian—all of which he does with ease and expertise. Five days after I returned to the States—incredibly cultured, fancy and exhausted—I moved out of my first New York apartment and into a much bigger, better and (inexplicably) cheaper apartment 15 blocks north.

I was also insanely busy at work, designing (among other things) a double-page spread in the New York Times, which was a crazy dream come true to open up the paper of record and see something I more-or-less created staring right back at me. BUT none of that is really important because this is a blog about adventures, and I have so many of them to recount that even if I stayed locked in my apartment (with my two fireplaces—!) for the rest of this year I would still have things to blog about. So, although I have barely had time to unpack let alone make any significant dent in the more than two thousand photos I took in Italy, I came across a group of photos I took in Florence that I just had to share immediately.

Florence was the second city on our itinerary and after the grand scale and ruin of Rome, it was a welcome change of pace. Florence was beautiful and significantly more compact than Rome, so we had more of an opportunity to focus our time.

One of our stops was the Galleria dell'Accademia to see Michelangelo's masterpiece, the David. Arguably one of the most, if not the most, famous statues in the entire world, the David is the Accademia's main attraction. There isn't much more in the museum, although my uncle and I both found Michelangelo's unfinished slave sculptures to be equally as intriguing and worthy as the more polished and idealistic David.

Once I got over the initial, surreal feeling of seeing such a crazy-iconic piece in real life, I shifted my focus to the crowd's behavior in the presence of such a famous work. There were a lot of selfies which are always incredibly awkward to witness—I feel the same way watching people take selfies as I do when I accidentally make eye contact with a dog that is mid-poop. Both activities seem intensely intimate and out-of-place in a public setting. But just because I'm uncomfortable does not mean that I'm not also fascinated—with how/if people smile, how they arrange themselves in front of the backdrop of choice and what they do following a successful capture (presumably Instagram it?).

Most people, however, immediately took out their phone and quickly snapped a photo of the David, because we all know if you don't photograph/Instagram it, it didn't really happen (I'm completely guilty of this, by the way). I spent the rest of our time in the Accademia basically stalking people—with the kind of zero-fucks-given attitude that can only come with being a tourist very, very far from anyone that could possibly recognize you—and trying to capture the David through their phone screen, or if I was really lucky, their iPad.

There was just something so removed and automatic about most of the people's photos—many didn't even take a moment to consider the statue without a screen between their eyeballs and the marble masterpiece. I wonder what Michelangelo would think if he suddenly walked into the future and saw girls posing with their best duck-face or people trying to figure out how to best fit his nearly 17 feet-tall statue within the Instagram frame?