Once, it was the most powerful and important city in the world; before New York, before London, and and anywhere else, Rome was a bonafide powerhouse. From its fabled beginnings as a town formed by two brothers nursed by a she-wolf, this settlement along the Tiber river soon grew into the epicenter of one of the most sprawling empires the world would ever know. Kings gave way to Emperors, a Senate was born, and much of current practices, law, business, and governments to name a few can be tied back to to this place and its people.

As they say, when in Rome. 

With the weather hot and this ancient city before us, it was time for Roaming Holiday to finally have a Roman holiday.

When you think of Florence, it's impossible not to think of the beautiful, massive Duomo and Cathedral Santa Maria del Fiore. Of Ponte Vecchio and Piazza della Repubblica. Of Uffizi Gallery and all the lingering presence of Renaissance Tuscany. These are the familiar touchstones for tourists flocking to see pieces of beautiful history and perhaps imagining just for a moment that at any moment they might pass Michelangelo in the streets. 

It is a city easy to see in a single day, but worth spending more in. 

John Steinbeck said it best in a 1953 Harper's Bazaar article:

“Positano bites deep. It is a dream place that isn’t quite real when you are there and becomes beckoningly real after you have gone’. And later in the article, ‘In a few days we became aware of Positano’s greatest commodity – characters.”

As you descend upon this Amalfi Coast town, through winding mountain roads high above the deep blue sea, it feels like stepping out of reality and into a tranquil oasis forged atop hills and spilling out to the volcanic rock beach below. This is not a town for a busy pace, instead you move to its slower ebb and tide and you will find yourself happy to be at the whims of its pace.

Sometimes the best laid plans change, and that's never more true than when it comes to traveling. The Amsterdam trip I was planning for May is now postponed tentatively for 2017. It happens, but luckily it's early enough in the year for me to cancel my Cocomama reservation. While I was looking forward to seeing the canals and tulips, I'm repurposing that travel bug energy into trying to work out a mid-June trip to Italy instead. I figure, hey, it's better than being bummed and there's still some time to see if it can happen.