Coffee, Gelati and Savonarola Sirens in the night: ambulances on heat it seems, and so, for us, a troubled sleep, and awake too early, sheet-tangled, to a morning scoured clean, pale blue sky beyond our open window. Oh, how I miss the smell of a foreign city in the morning. In Spain or Italy by choice, and early, before the sun is high – an inquisitive stroll through subdued, shadowed alleyways. That morning we walked, alert to the sound of women’s voices spilling from balconies draped with flowers, then into a cloistered yard; at its heart, a fresco, faded blood dripping on a wooden cross. Savonarola’s cell had me trying to recall A level history from long ago, Some sort of ‘religious martyr’ maybe…? The rest eluded me. Instead – coffee, a dark Florentine brew, in a bar metres from where he burned. Red wine for lunch and a walk in the Bardini Gardens, quietly forgotten, it seemed, on this other side of the river. Below us, the white stone of Florence, its shadows; then, blue, distant mountains. Wisteria artfully insinuated itself through a pergola and there were hydrangeas at every turn. Time for gelati, sitting on a sun-lit bench. The afternoon drifted before it was time to leave Bardini’s tranquil peace. Across the river, the harsh rasp of scooters, the cut and thrust of children playing, a busker’s guitar and raw, echoing voice, foot-weary tourists, and the city’s leitmotif – wailing sirens: the city’s police or ambulance crews – the afternoon shift. Richard Knott