Tipsy, Tired and “Visiting” Florence

The following is a guest post courtesy of Mathieu Bolduc.

“Do you know where we are?” Marie-Joelle asked me as we stumbled down a small cobble stone piazza. “Sure! It’s this way!” What I didn’t tell her is that I had only chosen the street that looked least likely to host an Italian version of Jack the Ripper (Antonio da Ripparr).  I had no idea where we were!

Well, I guess I should start by explaining that my girlfriend (MJ) and I had decided to take a lovely vacation in Italy. About half way through this beautiful trip, we found ourselves in the historic city of Florence. We visited the likes of the Boboli Gardens, the Duomo, and the Da Vinci museum.  After a full day of running around the city, our feet hurt, our daily cash allowance was spent and tensions between her and I grew as patience thinned. Our plan had been to head back to our hostel and take a much-needed nap. As we walked down the small streets of Florence, something occurred to me: This trip was too stressful! On that particular day, we had been so preoccupied with trying to keep to our tight schedule of sightseeing; we forgot to just enjoy the moment. Traveling rookie mistake!

I then quickly convinced MJ that we needed to sit down and have some booze right away!!  She was a little apprehensive at first, since we had spent all our allocated funds for the day. It didn’t take long for her to quickly agree that one small glass of wine would be okay. Two minutes later, we found a great little Italian restaurant. Turns out that the house wine was incredibly well priced and oh sooo good! Instead of the one glass, we opted for the full litre. It was around 8pm when the wine started flowing.

The only problem was that the jug of wine seemed to disappear within minutes! I did the only thing a reasonable human being should do. I ordered a second one! At this point, the mood was just right. Wine in our bellies, the sound of a far off street performer playing classic Italian love songs, I ordered us a beautifully delicate Tiramisu to accompany the wine. We just sat, talked and enjoyed the moment. It was perfection. I even considered buying some roses off of one of the 50 flower guys who kept coming to our table.

After a fantastic decompression session and few more drinks, we decided that it was time to make our way back to the hostel. At this point, you can imagine that we both were feeling the effects of the wine. Walking hand in hand down the streets of Florence, it dawned on MJ, she had no idea where we were. Feeling a strong misguided sense of testosterone fuelled pride, I confidently told her that I knew exactly where we were and I would lead us to safety!

I didn’t.

That night we found beautiful buildings, street art, street performers, musicians, and a dazzlingly lit carrousel. All things that we would have completely missed out on if we were to have gone straight back to the hostel like originally planned. Although MJ’s picture taking abilities were slightly impaired at this point.

After picking some streets at random, MJ quickly figured out that I had exaggerated my knowledge of the streets of Firenze. She then started insisting that we pull out the map from our backpack to find the quickest way home, as she had “plans” for me. Being a little tipsy, and a whole lot of stubborn, I yelled out in my manliest voice! “I AM Never Lost! I’m Just Visiting!!” I quickly turned down the least sketchy looking street I could find. It just so happened, by pure luck, that the next street I picked for us to walk down led us to the Duomo. Victory! Since our hostel was an easy 10 minute walk from the cathedral. It was a great victory for stubborn men everywhere.

Once back at the hostel, being a young couple, very much in the throes of love and passion, and being pretty drunk (lol), we decided that it wasn’t time for bed just yet. The only problem was that we were staying in a shared dorm-style room with 10 other people, not very classy. I decided that we should go on a hunt for more secluded areas of the building. Dressed in our pajamas and flip-flops, the hunt began. At this point, it was around 1 am. I figured the cafeteria area should be pretty empty at this time. So we started descending the stairway down to the basement of the hostel.

That’s when we started hearing the bass line to a Lady Gaga song. DAMN! There must be some people hanging out in the cafeteria, our naughty plans were foiled! That’s when we happened on a tall burly black man greeting us. Then he said in his deep burly black man voice, “Right this way”, as he opened the doors to the dining hall where just that morning we had our breakfast.

The whole place had turned into a huge dance bar! We both looked at each other, standing there in our flipy-flopies and pajamas, in shock at seeing the 100 plus people rocking out to Ace of Base. We did the only thing that we could do. Walked right in, hand in hand and we danced the rest of the night away!

We ended up closing down the bar, and having one of the best nights of our trip. From that point on, the whole tone of the trip was way more relaxed. It goes to show that if you take everything too seriously, you might just end up forgetting the real reason you’re on this amazing adventure in the first place. It took a completely unexpected night of wine, getting completely lost and crazy dancing to remind us of the reason we were traveling in the first place, to have fun!

Oh and if you’re wondering if we ever found that secluded area? I’m happy to say that we were very resourceful. 😉

Mathieu Bolduc is a Canadian cook currently working at The Bull and Last, voted one of The Times Top 20 gastropubs in the UK.  He is a machine in the kitchen and has been known to work up to 90 hours a week.

We miss you Mat!