30-Day Solo Travel in Europe | Day 21: Sunset at Piazzale Michelangelo
5/29/2023
(Previous chapter of my journey: 30-Day Solo Travel in Europe | Day 20: Off to Florence & First Glimpse of David)
With most museums in Florence closed on Mondays, we kept our schedule light. The plan was simple: visit a few churches and wander wherever the cobblestones led us.
We made our way to San Marco Museum, Cenacolo di Sant'Apollonia, and finally the Basilica di Santa Croce di Firenze. Of the three, Santa Croce left the deepest impression. Stepping inside Santa Croce felt like walking into a breath held for centuries. The architecture alone commands silence. But what makes this place truly special is who rests within its walls. Michelangelo, Galileo, Dante, Rossini — they're all buried beneath the marble floors. It's no wonder they call it the 'Temple of the Italian Glories'.
As evening approached, we headed to Piazzale Michelangelo, hoping to catch the sunset. We left a little late, though, and by the time we arrived the sky was already softening into dusk. It didn't matter. We stayed anyway.
We watched the light change, from warm orange melting into rose, then deepening to indigo, until finally night settled over everything. Florence opened up below us: not the dazzling, restless blaze of a city like Hong Kong, but a calmer, more reserved glow.
Italy has stayed with me as a dream travel destination since childhood. While others chased the polished romance of Paris, I was always drawn to Italy. I still carry the memory of watching Triumph in the Skies, those fleeting scenes of Sam and Belle falling in love against Italian stone and sky. Now, walking the worn cobbles of the Central Market or pausing before Brunelleschi’s great dome, those childhood visions stir and breathe again. It is not merely the present self who treads these streets. All the earlier versions of myself are at one together: the wide-eyed child, the restless adolescent, the quiet accumulations of years. Each step a reunion across time’s quiet corridor.
Perhaps that’s what travel quietly does: it lets you meet yourself across time. In the getting lost and the finding your way again, in the gentle back-and-forth between then and now, you start to see the long, winding path that brought you here. And the road ahead? One day, looking back, the answer will probably be clearer than it feels right now.
A thousand years of history carried in the stone, the domes, the towers. All of it quietly holding its own, watching time pass without needing to shout about it. There’s something proud and solitary about that view. And strangely comforting, too.
