FLORENCE: January, 2003 (Part 1)

The first time I traveled through Italy and stayed in pensioni, I savored waking to rich, dark coffee with foamy hot milk and a crusty chunk of bread served with butter and jam. Most pensioni included breakfast with their room rentals.

These years later, I was disappointed to find coffee machines in the dining rooms of the places I was staying at. These impersonal dispensers dribbled out caffeinated drink into plastic cups. On the side, guests could help themselves to a cellophane-wrapped pastry of some sort. An inedible and cheerless start to the day. I wanted Italy to stay exactly the same as I remembered but she wasn't cooperating.

I checked into a "Let's Go"-recommended pensione on my first cold but sunny morning in Firenze. The book mentioned a "delicious breakfast" but alas, it was also machine packaged. The room was tiny and musty and altogether dreary. A single bed with a thin mattress waited for me. I arranged another pensione for the second night and hit the street to get out of the place.

The guidebook did come through that evening, sending me into a lovely surprise for dinner. A small, working-class neighborhood restaurant filled with men at the end of their workday. White-tiled walls, small tables and a black-and-white floor. Black-and-white photographs of the city hung above the diners.

For the equivalent of a mere ten dollars I was served a meal of vegetable soup, rabbit cooked with spinach, and a full bread basket. Wine and water were included. Men gathered around tables in groups of four or five. They paid little attention to me, which was a good thing, but I couldn't help noticing the Italian custom of men going out and women staying in.

In the evenings,young couples met up in bars, but Sundays were for families. Entire families strolled the streets. The father held a ribbon-wrapped gold box from the panetteria, the wife alongside kept an eye on the youngsters and everyone exchanged greetings with neighbors. Only on Sundays would whole families gather in restaurants. I've been told tradition keeps Italian women running the home and Italian men running the street. As a woman on her own, I dined most evenings surrounded by men and wondered if this tradition would ever advance.

A tradition I hope doesn't change is that of the siesta. In Italy citizens disappear after enjoying a large lunch with wine. Shops close down, restaurants shutter, and folks nap. I like this. After a morning of sightseeing I spent my afternoons reading and snoozing. Eateries didn't re-open for dinner until seven-thirty, which left waning hours for museums, galleries or window shopping. Apparently, Spain is in a fierce wrestle to save its siesta tradition as Western hours descend on the workplaces of Madrid and Barcelona. This may well be the case in Rome, but smaller cities and towns still honor the sacred siesta.