Acqua in bocca

Abbiamo imparato molte espressioni idiomatici nelle nostre classe: "Avere l'acqua in bocca" significa mantenere un segreto - quando si ha l'acqua in bocca non si può parlare senza spargimento! In questa casa, io ho l'acqua in bocco riguardo a alcuni posti quale ho scoperto a Firenze.*

When you think of Florence you think, as I always did before I arrived, of the cradle of so many things we think of as Italian - art, fashion, culture, the Renaissance, the Medici dynasty, the food. The Duomo looms as large in the public perception of Florence as the structure itself does in the cityscape. Even the Italian language was born in this beautiful city. 

What you don't realise until you've given yourself time to really explore, is how easy it is to step beyond those ideas and find yourself in a very different city. It's not just a case of being able to slip down a narrow alley and find yourself in a little piazza with a tiny stone church getting ready for a traditional wedding. 

You can walk less than five minutes from one of the most popular tourist hotspots, Piazzale Michelangelo, and find yourself in a place very few tourists visit - a country lane which could well be in the deepest Tuscan countryside (often with a different view of the Duomo). You can step away from a suburban supermarket carpark into a park topped by a palazzo where you encounter only a jogger and a couple of dogwalkers, or get a sneak peek over a garden wall into acres of olive groves.

It takes a while to realise that this city which seems so important on the world stage, is really a large provincial town, with fewer than 400,000 residents and city limits which are probably less than 10kms across at its widest. Of course that population is hugely expanded by the presence of tourists ( 2 million this Summer season alone), but as long as they stay away from my secret places - va bene.

* In Italian classes we learnt a lot of idioms. Avere l'acqua in bocca literally translates as to have water in your mouth - but means to keep a secret. If you have water in your mouth you can't speak without spilling it . I have water in my mouth about some of the places I discovered while in Firenze.