ciao, milano!

After leaving Como and on the way to Florence we had a brief stop in Milan for brunch, cappucino and sight-seeing. We managed to snag a park right next to the Duomo and the galleria, so we soaked up those beautiful stained glass windows and amazing expanse of vaulted glass and iron light (it doesn't get more 19th century than a glass covered shopping arcade!) greedily. After that was more hot chocolate and then the Scala to pay homage to my favourite Ballerina brand; Porselli. We stumbled in as night had fallen, red-nosed and chilled to the bone, and were greeted by two Italian grand dames who didn't speak a word of English (and us vice versa!) gesturing wildly and pronouncing "Bella" at everything shoe we tried on. After some mishaps with describing sizes and colours (sign language, as always, is our friend), we were dragged into the store room and up the ladder to pull down the pairs we wanted ourselves. It doesn't get much better than that! For a brief second I had some kind of out of body experience, like this is what it must feel like to be Audrey Hepburn or Brigitte Bardot, surrounded by people and at least 10 pairs of shoes on a chesterfield lounge next to La Scala. 

Porselli ballet flats are my absolute favourites; they're handmade by the Porselli company (founded in the early 1900s by Mr Porselli, of course) in Italy and their location right next to Milan's grand theatre casts them as the pointe shoe maker par excellence for the city's limber ballerinas. Not being a ballerina myself - try though I did! - I come for the ballet flats, which are soft and supple, long in the toe box and high on the sides (to avoid buckling and toe cleavage, two of my least favourite things in ballet flats), completed with a grosgrain trim with smooth leather or the softest, simplest brushed nubuck. These shoes are perfect. They are as light as a cloud and so chic. They're so difficult to get your hands on - hence the need for pilgrimages! - but if you're lucky enough to have an A.P.C store nearby you can pick up a pair from their collaboration with the french brand (thought at slightly elevated prices). The best, though, will always be a trip to the store itself, slipping out of your shoes, your coat, your beanie and scarf, and onto that red carpet, where a line of ballet flats will be laid out for you and for a moment you can feel just like Brigitte.

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pernicious charm

"It was pleasant to wake up in Florence, to open the eyes upon a bright bare room, with a floor of red tiles which look clean though they are not; with a painted ceiling whereon pink griffins and blue amorini sport in a forest of yellow violins and bassoons. It was pleasant, too, to fling wide the windows, pinching the fingers in unfamiliar fastenings, to lean out into sunshine with beautiful hills and trees and marble churches opposite, and close below, the Arno, gurgling against the embankment of the road. 

Over the river men were at work with spades and sieves on the sandy foreshore, and on the river was a boat, also diligently employed for some mysterious end. An electric tram came rushing underneath the window. No one was inside it, except one tourist; but its platforms were overflowing with Italians, who preferred to stand. Children tried to hang on behind, and the conductor, with no malice, spat in their faces to make them let go. Then soldiers appeared—good-looking, undersized men—wearing each a knapsack covered with mangy fur, and a great-coat which had been cut for some larger soldier. Beside them walked officers, looking foolish and fierce, and before them went little boys, turning somersaults in time with the band. The tramcar became entangled in their ranks, and moved on painfully, like a caterpillar in a swarm of ants. One of the little boys fell down, and some white bullocks came out of an archway. Indeed, if it had not been for the good advice of an old man who was selling button-hooks, the road might never have got clear. 

Over such trivialities as these many a valuable hour may slip away, and the traveller who has gone to Italy to study the tactile values of Giotto, or the corruption of the Papacy, may return remembering nothing but the blue sky and the men and women who live under it."

E.M Forster, A Room With A View

We're staying in a lovely little apartment in Florence, outside the city centre, with a library and a balcony and tiles on the floor, with windows you can fling open (a room with a view, if you will) to see, if not the water, then at the very least the promise of the water. The apartment is lovely and little and clean and it's a real home but nothing it does, no amount of shuttered windows or terracotta tiles or library shelves or fresh tomatoes or clean washing or cups of tea it presents to us, nothing it does, absolutely nothing, can compare to Florence.

It's like what Lucy said. Today was soggy and wet, with a cool wind and an overcast sky (even the Pitti Uomo characters called it a day and settled in for aperitivi and cigars at the Four Seasons), but just one look at the candy-cane marble of the Cathedral, the vaulted fresco entryway at the Palazzo Vecchio, a glimpse of the Santa Maria Novella bell tower while lost on a side street (should have bought that Baedecker, hmm), that majestic dome, made everything seem quite alright. "Then the pernicious charm of Italy worked on her, and, instead of acquiring information, she began to be happy." In Florence I began to be happy.

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