A Florentine Dream

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Location: Hotel Continentale – Florence, Italy

These photos capture another Florentine dream come true – a stay at the Hotel Continentale, in a suite overlooking the famous Ponte Vecchio.

There’s no right or wrong way to travel, really. But the way I travel, and visit cities, has evolved a lot since our first European adventure in 2009. I was twenty-three and inexperienced when we went to stay in Paris that first time, and while I felt like we planned that trip meticulously, I know that in reality, our approach was pretty haphazard. We took a lot of long, lovely walks through various European capitals, seeing more of the sights in some than others. It was a different time. We didn’t even own cell phones, one of the many sacrifices we’d made to cut down on expenses so that dream trip could become reality. Google Maps, if it existed, was in its infancy. Even if it had occurred to me to plan then the way that I do now, the resources to do it didn’t exist.

By 2018, I was a lot more organized. I was on my fourth of fifth iPhone by then, which helped. That year, I also started making a Google Map for every trip we took. I’d had one too many experiences missing out on seeing something I would have loved simply because I failed to plan. And the planning, I quickly discovered, was almost as much fun as the holiday itself.

I keep all of my Google Maps, and I still refer to the one I made for our 2018 trip to Florence sometimes. It was on that trip, relying on that map, that I learned that there is no foolproof way to travel. While I do better, and see more, with a plan than if I choose to simply wander the city streets with no particular destination in mind, plans are only a guide. There’s so much you can’t know about a place until you arrive, so much that a map simply can’t help you to understand. We’d been in Florence for almost a week, staying in an apartment we loved in Oltrarno, when I noticed the lovely hotels dotting the street on the opposite riverbank. There was one in particular, with a rooftop bar I could just barely glimpse, that captured my imagination.

…but it was nearly time to go home. Our days and evenings were full. The hotel I’d seen was called the Continentale, I learned. We didn’t have the chance to find out anything more about it until we were back in Canada. We regretted not visiting even more when we saw photos of the hotel. Next time we’re in Florence, I promised myself, we’ll stay there. Thus, a Florentine dream was born.

I have lots of dreams like that one. One-way plan tickets to fabulous destinations. Hotels with perfect city views that I’d love to stay in someday, when my budget suddenly and miraculously becomes unlimited. They’re just dreams, silly ideas that distract me on long, stressful days at work. I don’t expect any of them to come true. I certainly didn’t expect that this one would.

But it did. And mostly, it did because I’ve found a way to plan for holidays that really works for me, one that leaves nothing to chance but allows for just the smallest amounts of impulsive adventuring and spontaneous decision-making. When we booked our train tickets to Florence, the next step was to find a place to stay. We would only be in the city for one night, which meant we needed to stay somewhere central, somewhere that would allow us to walk everywhere we wanted to go quickly and easily.

The hotels along the river bank immediately came to mind – and the Continentale was at the top of the list. I started to map the places we wanted to go, the sites we wanted to revisit. The Hotel Continentale was perfectly positioned to allow us to do it all. The only problem, the only thing standing between me and my Florentine dream coming true, was the cost. The enviable location and luxurious rooms come with a price tag to match, one that I suspect I would probably find shocking even if we could genuinely afford it – which, the reality is, we simply can’t.

But my travel planning goes beyond just making maps and itineraries. I also store up all different kinds of travel points – Airmiles, Aeroplan, Expedia, and the list goes on. After two travel-free years, I had quite a few. Enough, with Airmiles, to cover the cost of my dream suite at the Hotel Continentale. My twenty-three-year-old self, exploring Europe for the first time without adult supervision, thought she put her trip together pretty well. And she did, for her age. But she still had a lot to learn about how to plan a truly magical holiday. If she’d seen this hotel rom, she would have fallen in love – but also written it off as inaccessible to her, never giving another thought to the idea that she might someday really be able to stay there, if she just planned and saved for it.

I loved my travel adventures when I was younger, even if they were poorly planned. But I’m so grateful for all the experiences I’ve had since then and what they’ve taught me; that if you come up with a good plan, particularly for a holiday, almost anything is possible.

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