Twenty-four hours in Florence

Auto-captioned from the film, lightly cleaned. Elena's words, not edited prose.

Hi. Hello. How's it going? Coming to you from beautiful Florence. I'm so excited to be here. I missed you. What's up? What's new? I actually flew from Italy a few days ago from London with my best friend Ashley and we did a little road trip around Tuskanyany, which was so beautiful. That video will actually be coming out after this, so stay tuned. I've never been to Florence before, so we're here for just a day. So, I want to make it a mission to spend the best possible 24 hours in the city.

I feel like when you travel a lot, you're maybe not quite as interested in hitting every like main tourist attraction, doing a few touristy stuff because it's touristy for a reason. There's some things you just can't miss. But overall, we're taking recommendations from friends that are either locals or have lived here or just spent a lot of time here and just trying to find the best bites and coffee and shopping and art and all the fun things in between. I've also been meaning to, so this is me holding myself to it, start a Subsack specifically for travel and all things travel related.

So, I'm going to have a Subsack article linked below nicely detailing everything we got up to as well as a Google map so you can just find everything there and it's nice and easy for you to follow along. I'm going to get changed. We're about to go brave a heat wave. Let's go see Florence, shall we? So beautiful waking up here in the morning and stepping outside and look at this. You've got to be kidding me. Turn the corner and this is what you see. looking absolutely stunning. That line is looking very long.

Insider tip. If you see this long line, come to room 51. timed ticket. I was waiting in this line for literally like 35 minutes. I was about to give up and then someone was like, "Wait, go to this window instead." And now I'm going to come back. I got my time ticket for 9:45. And I'm going to go check out Mi Chow, which is one of the other ones on my little Florence bucket list. And then go see David and then we'll meet back up with Ash. One thing that confuses me about European chapels.

It's literally 9:14. Look at her. Okay. Well, she had something to say and she said it. All right. How do we get in here? This is absolutely stunning. The Italians certainly know how to uh do marble unlike anyone else. Crazy. Today's our like little shopping day. Hope to find a leather bag, some ceramics, maybe a bit of olive oil to bring back. There's nothing sheer. Going to a friend's house. So cute. Tiny box. My neutra phone wouldn't even fit. What we produce the first 10 days of harvesting tomorrow means the new way.

Yeah, fix it. I've never been a pink girl my whole life, but there's something about this color combo. These are so beautiful. One of the shops in Florence that is clearly very, very, very high quality. Infinity. We're taking a little break in the shade. Very needed, very necessary. But we're in the heat waves, so I'll take a little bit of shade, a little bit of respit. And I wanted to take a second to thank today's sponsor, BetterHelp. Life has been very crazy recently. I spent a few months trying to figure out where I wanted to live next and then finally ended up moving in.

And I'm now living between two continents. And there's just a lot going on. And so taking time to take care of myself and treat myself like this trip, but take care of myself also emotionally and mentally through therapy is so so so crucial. I've been a huge fan and advocate over the years for therapy, which you know if you watch my channel and I just think being able to speak to a professional and a licensed therapist when it comes to navigating, you know, big life changes and new chapters is so beneficial for that journey.

That's why I'm so thankful for BetterHel. I feel like it makes therapy feel so much less intimidating and it makes it really easy to start. All you need to do is take a quiz to get matched with a therapist. Once you make sure you have the right fit, you can communicate by video, phone, text. Like you have all these different options, which I love cuz then I can do therapy from either the comfort of my own home, which I always prefer, or for example, like right now when I'm traveling, which is a lot of the time, so when I'm on the go, I can still talk to my therapist.

You can click the link in the description and get 10% off and go to betterhelp.com/alena. And there's never a perfect or a right time to start therapy. So, why not try it out today? And now that I've had a little bit of a rest, it's time to get back into the sun and let's do a little bit more uh Florence exploring, shall we? Let's go. Come on. Hello. Look at the view. We came to the iconic bridge here in Florence for one of the most incredible sunsets. Couldn't be better. It's so pretty.

Everyone is doing the same exact thing as us. It's really sweet. Like, it's so pretty. We're like mom and mom. Show the kids. And you have the moon and all the little swallows. Swallow. Those look swallow. Yeah, swallow. It's pretty magic. You see, it's a fragile thing, but it's only in your mind. My God, it's way too heavy. Crawl back in my mink. Kind of nervous. You have more and sh this this is the heaven 10 p.m. on a can't speak. This is living 10 p.m. on a Friday night eating our gelato and it's so beautiful.

I had these at our hotel. I recommend you stop in. Yeah. Get it while you can. My childhood. Don't mind if I do. The architecture, the design, like the intricate detail. People used to make this with their hands. That's so nice. That's exactly what you wanted. Look how this is very city bag. City bag. Proper leather. This is beautiful. We've been through the world where I can be a lonely place. Baby, I'm so glad that I found you. I got someone to break from the day you stole my heart. I never wanted to.

Oh my god. It's so tiny. We come here all the time. Our dream. So special. This is my dream. She's moving in. I'm moving in.