While ill and laying face up, staring at the ceiling for weeks, my spirits took a decidedly downward turn. Fortunately, I’m easily amused and so the task was to balance the pendulum swing between despair and uproarious laughter (which would send me into electrifying pain).

My brother, whose default around upset is hilarity and amusement, took to bringing me fashion magazines and design books which helped my mind to soar above the melting sameness of each day. My companion was less successful as his default is raucous laughter and distraction. I have never ended so many phone calls with an abrupt hang up in my life. He understood as I was wailing ow, ow, ow while laughing.

After a while, the decided thing was to present me with things to look forward to.

“Where shall we go this summer?” A cheerful enough question which at first was met with sullen dismissal. But paging through the April Vogue’s travel section, (you can access the online version here) my imagination awakened to the thought of Florence with the single opening line “Florence, Italy is having something of a renaissance right now.”

As it pleased me, my companion latched on and the promise was made, Florence it is! Over the months a little something and then another little something fashionable was purchased for the trip here and there.

The months went by, the healing built momentum, I laugh with abandon and after some delay, we set off to Florence. I’ll be delicate about the use of word play involving my name and our chosen destination, but I won’t promise a shameless quip or two because it brings me quite some satisfaction that my name isn’t synonymous with the flamboyant 80’s athletic stylings of the one, the only Florence Griffith Joyner or the sterility and seriousness of the founder of modern nursing Florence Nightengale.

Our journey, which I ask you to accompany me on, will follow the sights of that Vouge article when in the city and will be punctuated by exploration into Tuscany. There will be emphasis on art, food and fashion.

We will travel by car from Zurich, so grab car type snacks and off we go!