FLORENCE: February, 2003 (Part 3)

The rest my time in Florence I spent gazing at Jesus and Madonnas in the Uffizi, lunching on a picnic in the Boboli Gardens, wandering around the Pitti Palace for more Renaissance art and searching up one street and down another for the Mercato Centrale.

I have a fascination for city markets, and the view didn't get much better than a two-story indoor market of stalls stacked with vibrantly colored vegetables and fruits. The reds, purples, oranges and greens looked freshly dipped from the palate of a painter.

I inhaled air pungent with the aroma of cheeses. Smoked meats dangled from the ceiling. Fresh-caught fish tinted in pale grays and pinks lay one after another, as if napping. Oh, I regretted that William and I were living in a hotel room. Grand as it was, it did not have a stove...a stove...I'd give up those white linens for a stove.

My lunch space at the market was shared at a rustic wood table with local workmen in from the street for glasses of golden beer and their sandwiches of choice, giant hot pork panini. The meat, crispy on the outside, pink on the inside and succulent in juicy drippings.

I took a last long walk around the city, which shimmered in the autumn light. It was comforting that as the world spins into advanced technology some things stay put...David, the Duomo, the Ponte Vecchio, Tuscan light, and pork sandwiches.

On my last night in Florence, rain poured down in sheets, creating pond-sized puddles. I sloshed in and out of a restaurant for dinner, and on my way back to the pension decided to celebrate and stepped into a dimly-lit taverna. I found an empty stool at the bar, ordered up a cappuccino laced with whiskey and looked around at the crowd of Firenzian hipsters.

Young couples laughed and flirted, moved close to light cigarettes and sipped from martini glasses while sharing casual winks. I wanted to join in. I wanted to converse, to have beautiful Italian sentences and witticisms drip off my tongue. To laugh or chat passionately about world politics and art and food and love. My satisfaction at traveling alone melted away as quickly as the foam on my coffee. My singular melancholy was as romantic as that of a spinster. Kate Hepburn at the beginning of "Summertime."

I finished my drink, slipped off the barstool and stepped back out the door as anonymously as I had arrived.