Florence

DURING THIS PAST WEEKEND, we went to Florence. I was expecting it to be similar to Cagli, but was shocked with how incredibly different life is there. Florence is so utterly Americanized. It is horrible. After being in Cagli, Florence lost some of her sparkle. People in Florence consist of mostly tourists and a few Italian natives.

Don’t get me wrong. Florence is beautiful, but it is lacking the raw, unadulterated traditional beauty that characterizes Cagli and towns like it. I guess this is true of any large city. One can expect that it would be greatly touristed. This saddens me because I think that the most important part of traveling and exploring is experiencing the occasion as a whole. It’s the small things about a place that make it so memorable. I just came to realize this. I am typically the kind of person who enjoys large cities and places with a lot of hustle and bustle. Florence had all this, but for some reason I really missed Cagli.

--Catherine Leung