My first visit to Florence came more than fifty years ago as a junior in college, traveling through Italy on a student budget. Florence in the 1970s was a city of crowded trains, inexpensive wine, and sleeping on the floor with friends at their university housing.
Days were spent wandering narrow Renaissance streets with little more than a guidebook and enough lire for coffee, pizza, and museum admissions and wine, of course. Like many travelers discovering Florence for the first time, the city felt impossibly old, cultured and dramatic.
