Travels with Debra: Florence, Italy 2026 Avocado toast, sparking water, and white sneakers

As we enjoy our last breakfast in Florence, my husband remarks, “Notice all the white sneakers?”

Outside the café (Paszkowski), the landscape is dotted with colorful umbrellas. The rain patters, and indeed most of the umbrella carriers wear white sneakers.

I know what he’s thinking. In the late 1990s, a lovely Belgian student, Patricia, who was spending a semester at Vanderbilt, invited me to teach a course at the Vlerick School of Management in Ghent, Belgium.

I accepted the engagement, and for the next six years or so, I periodically spent a couple of weeks in Ghent. The students there humbled me, as English was their third language and they struggled valiantly to understand my southern drawl.

One day, as I was wearing my white sneakers, Patricia politely warned me, “In Europe people only wear white trainers to the gym.” Not always the most observant, I began to notice feet. Sure enough, my white shoes provided a glaring contrast to the predominant black ones. Things have changed since then. At the moment, I’m sporting red sneakers and I definitely don’t see many, if any, of these.

For breakfast, I’ve ordered avocado toast, a splurge at 18 euros. It arrives in a thick bread bowl, reminiscent of French onion soup servings a few years ago. Although topped with slices of avocado and zucchini, I find it almost impossible to eat.

A few tables over, I notice another woman receiving the same order. Her expression tells me she’s less than thrilled. She passes one of the two bread bowls on her plate from person to person down a long table until someone accepts the offering. I watch as both he and she attempt to devour bits of the bread, with not much more success than I’ve had.

My daughter has said, “Mom invented avocado toast.” Before ever seeing it on a menu, I discovered how delicious avocado can be spread over a thin slice of buttered sourdough toast, topped with sliced cherry tomatoes, or atop a bagel with cream cheese.

The first year I taught in Belgium, someone provided bottles of water at the podium. Some had blue caps, others red. “What’s the difference?” I asked.
“Bubbles.”
“Excuse me?”
“Bubbles.” I tried both and learned to appreciate sparkling water. In fact, I preferred it to still. “It’s like drinking champagne without the alcohol,” I said.

Back in the U.S., however, sparkling water had not yet made its arrival. I looked for it in groceries and found it on rare occasions. More often, though, it was sweetened or contained artificial sweeteners. Nowadays, of course, virtually every grocery carries multiple brands.

My husband says, “We should have bought stock in sparkling water long ago.”
As we get older, adjusting to jet lag gets no easier, particularly for my husband. I’m sleep challenged anyway, so perhaps it affects me a bit less. But, after flying out of Nashville on Wednesday, I still struggled to stay asleep on Saturday night.

Florence exploded with crowds. I remember traveling during the height of the pandemic. “We should have done more traveling back then,” I said, “when airports and tourist attractions were relatively empty.”

Nonetheless, I enjoyed the city. I was here once before, in July of 1983. As I recall, it was one of the hottest days on record. I remember seeing an elderly man pass out from the heat on a bus.

Until the rain today, the weather has been nearly perfect this time around. I’ve always been a fan of Michelangelo, since reading Irving Stone’s The Agony and the Ecstasy when I was a teen. When I visited Florence in 1983, we saw only the replica of David. This time we saw the original. It did not disappoint.

Other highlights include the two-hour walking tour escorted by a local woman costing (believe it or not) only about 7.50 euros. The tour guides, working mainly for tips, provide a wealth of knowledge about history and tradition of the city.

The tour ended in the open-air museum of Signoria Square, where the statues of the Loggia dei Lanzi, Palazzo Vecchio, former residence of the Medici family, surround you.

I always talk about food, but I’ll try to be brief. The brioche filled with chocolate or pistachio is inexpensive (about 2 Euros) and utterly divine; the gelato is amazing, and you can try free samples, or ask for two flavors even in the smallest size container.

The sandwiches are acclaimed, and I tried boar salami with truffle sauce and truffle cheese at Il Bufalo Trippone, very tasty, inexpensive, but very salty. I also enjoyed risotto with mussels and shrimp at a restaurant near our small hotel, Residenza della Signoria, which was ideally located in the heart of Florence (and had a lift).

Ahead, I’m looking forward to visiting Siena, Cinque Terre, the Amalfi Coast, Capri, Naples, and Pompeii. I’ll plan to write more later.
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By the way, I’m reading The Correspondent by Virginia Evans as I travel. The protagonist in the novel often shares what she’s reading with one of her friends, which seems a good idea.