The city center is nothing but a tourist trap, you’ll find all the fancy restaurants by the Duomo with amazing views and great services, but the food is crap and the prices are way too high.
I consider myself a victim of these tourist traps during my first few weeks in Florence, until I realised that I’m paying 40 euros for microwaved lasagna, yay me! I didn’t know it until I actually got out of the center, where all the locals eat, shop, and drink, it is that great difference made me want to set the city center on fire and take my money back.
Just on the other side of the river, which is only a 15 minutes walk, a little restaurant served me Gnocchi drowned in cheese and Tuscan steak. (oh God, writing this down is making my stomach growl.)
It’s what I’d like to call the perfect, classic Italian meal made for locals, by locals. As a great food enthusiast, finding this out was the key to heaven and probably one of the reasons why i never want to leave.
If you ever come to Florence, never buy anything from the city center, be a little smarter than I was and go out further to discover more. My only problem now is that outside of the city center, people barely speak English and the language barrier is making it very hard for me to communicate.
If I’m going to stay here for at least 3 years, I might as well learn that weird Italian anguage (with the accent, for the fun of it.)
So my next journey is finding the right place to learn Italian, and not just any Italian, I want street Italian!