Notte Bianca in Florence, Italy or ‘White Night’ as us English speakers call it. It came, we went, we conquered. Well at least in my own way ;-). We started off my evening getting a drink with a few bloggers up on the beautiful terrace of Grand Hotel Cavour.

The view from this place will make even a nun take a selfie (which is probably more common than we think). The perfect place to watch the sun go down and hear the rumble on the streets below, a mix of people starting their tour of the city and bands beginning to play.

On my way to Hotel Cavour, I stopped briefly at the Ponte Vecchio to check out the beautiful lanterns bobbing up and down in the water between the bridge and Ponte Santa Trinita. With the sunset starting to form, it was quote the incredible site. A sort of ‘calm before the storm’ moment that I had to capture.

Once we got to Hotel Cavour, we went straight up to the terrace for one of those open-mouth-gasp-slaps-face moments that comes with seeing the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore aka our “Duomo” so up close and personal. You know I love my views, and this is truly one of the best I’ve seen in town. Here I am with mock jazz hands showing that, I too, can feel like a tourist without embarrassment. 

We ended up staying a long time up here, just chatting and catching up. Since notte bianca generally runs until the wee hours, I figured we could take a walk around the city and get home before things got too insane for me to handle. My first impressions was I while I saw a ton of people {and this could just be me} I didn’t see a ton of things? This also being that I only went to Piazza Santa Croce, San Niccolo, and oltrarno area. I am sure things were different by Piazza Repubblica, Signoria & Duomo area. In San Niccolo there were huge projections on various walls showing the history of the city, which was neat but I also thought, where was the music?

On the other hand, I think like many Italians looking to avoid the madness of the crowd, many museums were open for free and hosted special performances, like the one we saw in the Museo Stefano Bardini by Ponte alle Grazie. Bardini himself was a famous antiquarian whose collection in this ex-church & convent is quite impressive, a combination of armory, sculptures, old musical instruments, paintings {check out the St. Michael Archangel by Antonio Del Pollaiolo}, furniture pieces, ceramic pieces, tapestries but also fragments of the old centre of Florence. Absolutely worthy of a visit.

We also made our way to the Eduardo Secci Contemporary gallery on via maggio to say hi to a friend and check out some art during their white night cocktail party. The current exhibit is titled ‘What remains’ by Paolo Grassino (curated by Marco Meneguzzo and Daniele Capra). They showed us the downstairs room featuring Analgesia, an artwork that could frighten anyone on a dark night, a pack of wolves leering menacing at us. If you get the chance, stop by the gallery before the exhibit ends (the end of May).

Last but not least was ending up in a place which is well, home. Nearby Piazza della Passera where a full concert was underway and people were letting their hair down and dancing. Just imagine every kind of person, old & young, tourist and local, it was a good time. (excuse the below blurry photo) we actually got photobombed in another shot which I kind of had to respect, on a night like this – what can you expect.