Corner of Via dei Serragli and Lungarno

Sometimes at random moments I find myself transported to the corner of Via dei Serragli and Lungarno.
Sometimes I am eating a dark chocolate gelato.
Sometimes I am watching customers - two or three deep - milling before the glass cases at the gelateria, overwhelmed by the choices.
Sometimes I am leaning over the bridge ledge, or even sitting on it, watching the River Arno slide by.

But always it is dusk, the city of Firenze spread out around me, warmed by those last golden hues.

Firenze is an easy city to love, a hard city to leave.
In four days I will be there again, struggling with my Italian, tripping over the cobblestones I simply cannot navigate in heels (so embarrassing), greeting the used bookstore owner with a cheery "buongiorno" (does he ever sell anything?).

Most of all, I get the guilty pleasure of exploring a Renaissance gem over 7 weeks. It will all seem new again, I am sure.

There are also dark things to mull over, like the rude shopkeepers, like the $300 traffic ticket I am still fighting from last summer. I got it for picking up a rental car in the Firenze historic district and dropping it off again. Why haven't they dropped the ticket, you might ask? Hey, it's Italy.

I leave for Firenze optimistic. About what a different culture teaches me. About having some time to think. About...

...what new thing I will spot at the corner of Via dei Serragli and Lungarno. At dusk.