I pretty much booked Australia on a whim.

That is the cleanest way to say it now, though at the time it did not feel clean at all. It felt like a leap. It felt like pressing purchase on a flight before I had the full map of the year ahead. It felt like trusting verbal confirmations from clients, trusting the shape of work that had not yet hardened into contracts, trusting that the money would come, trusting that the world would hold, trusting that I was allowed to want something before I had earned perfect certainty.

I booked the trip in the middle of November 2024. Less than six weeks before I would leave Dublin, to land in Melbourne on Christmas morning.

There is something psychologically confusing about flying over Christmas. Maybe it is the way airports feel both full and abandoned. Maybe it is the way everyone around you seems to be moving toward something familiar while you are moving away from it. Maybe it is the strange permission that comes with being suspended between time zones while the rest of the world continues with dinner tables, wrapping paper, family arguments, weather reports, old traditions, and ordinary expectations.

I left Dublin in winter. I left in fleece and grey air and 30-degree temperatures. I landed in Australia in the summer. In light. In heat. Our landing felt less like an arrival and more like a complete atmospheric interruption.

By the time I got there, Christmas had already become something else. Not the Christmas I knew. Not the Christmas I had been raised around. Cold air was gone, the days were long, and none of the rooms or traditions felt familiar. It was disorientating. I had crossed more than geography. I had crossed out of the usual emotional architecture of the season entirely.

The reason I went was my great-aunt Mary. Gran’s sister.

She was turning eighty-nine three days after Christmas and had no idea I was coming. The plan was simple. Fly in. Surprise her. Attend the birthday celebrations. Meet the extended family I had only ever heard about in stories. Spend the better part of six weeks exploring Australia on my own.

That was the plan.

What happened was something else.

On Christmas morning, still hazy from sleep and lightly concerned about why everyone wanted her up so early, Aunt Mary came into the room and saw me. There was a moment before understanding landed. That tiny gap between seeing and knowing. Then the shock. Then the joy. Then the room changed.

I had imagined the surprise many times before I arrived, but there are some things you cannot rehearse your way into. I had never met many of these people before. They were family, but also strangers. Familiar in name and story, unfamiliar in body and presence. I had come prepared to be polite, grateful, and maybe a little outside of things. I had expected warmth, but I had not expected eagerness. I had not expected people to be as excited to meet me as I was to meet them.

That was the first surprise Australia gave me. Not the landscape. Not the heat. Not the scale of the city. Not even the strange miracle of arriving on the other side of the world on Christmas morning.

It was the feeling of being received.

The first week was not so glamorous. It was mostly sleep.

I have never known jet lag like that. I do not think my body understood what I had done to it. There were days when I had to go to bed at three in the afternoon, or four, or six, and then sleep straight through until one in the morning or three or six. I would wake in the dark with no real sense of where I was. I would stretch. Eat something. Go back to sleep. Try again. It felt like recovery.

That is the word I keep coming back to because it was not just travel fatigue. It was not just time-zone math. It felt physical and spiritual. As if the distance itself had forced my body to shut down all the systems I normally keep running. The old alerts. The old obligations. The old panic. The old habit of being available to every crisis in real time. Australia made that impossible.

The time difference did something to me. It created a distance I could not negotiate my way out of. There were only small windows of the day when a client could reach me and expect a real-time response. And, it showed me how rare of an occurrence this actually is. Outside of those waking windows, work was either something I leaned into or didn’t. A crisis was either still a crisis by the time I woke up, or it had already revealed itself to be noise.

That geography forced a prioritization I had not known how to choose on my own, too. For the first time in a long time, I was too far away to perform urgency at full volume. I was too tired to pretend everything mattered equally. I was too physically disrupted to maintain the same relationship to stress. “You’re a day ahead of whatever it is,” quickly became my mantra whenever the phone rang.

The distance did not solve anything. It did not make my life suddenly easier. But it changed the way my body received the demands placed on it. And inside that change, there was space. Space for excitement. Space for appetite. Space for curiosity. Space for constructive things. Expansive things. Space to let the day become more than a container for someone else’s need.

The first week, I slept, stretched, ate, and slowly came back to myself.

I also discovered chili scramble. This feels important to mention. Because not every resurrection is some grand celebration. Sometimes it is eggs.

In Australia, chili scramble is everywhere, and it’s rarely careless. It is not a heap of eggs slopped onto a plate because someone needed to move breakfast along. It is plated with attention. Scrambled eggs, soft and generous, dressed with crispy heat, herbs, sourdough, and some form of brightness. That, paired with coffee, iced water, and an orange juice, is a breakfast that feels awake.

At Brick Lane, tucked near Flagstaff Gardens, I ordered eggs and found myself returning to life bite by bite. Heat in the mouth. Coffee on the table. The city outside already moving. My body still lagging behind the clock, but something in me beginning to catch up. I think the chili scrambles brought me back.

By the time I felt normal enough to leave the softened rhythm of recovery, my cousins Little John and Ash took me down the Great Ocean Road with Ash’s kids. I had spent weeks loosely planning Australia and somehow had not understood that this road existed in the way it does. I had not understood that a day could unfold with that much beauty in it and still feel unforced.

We stopped again and again. Viewpoint after viewpoint. Coastline after coastline. The sea opening in impossible blues. Cliffs dropping down into surf. Long bends in the road where the land seemed to keep revealing another version of itself.

The generosity of it is what stays with me.

Not just the landscape, though the landscape was astonishing. Not just the Twelve Apostles, which are no longer twelve but still hold the strange authority of a natural wonder. Not just the waterfall tucked into eucalyptus, the smell of the trees so aromatic it felt medicinal. Not just the first Australian iced coffee, made with vanilla ice cream instead of milk or half-and-half, which felt completely excessive and completely correct.

It was the fact that they wanted to take me.

They wanted to show me something. They wanted to spend the day doing something they knew I would love. Historical things. Adventurous things. Coastal things. Things I had built whole parts of my life around seeking.

That eagerness was almost trippy. I had not grown up inside this particular branch of the family. I knew names. Stories. Fragments. The kind of inherited knowledge that makes people feel both intimate and far away. But there I was, on the other side of the world, being driven along one of the most beautiful roads I had ever seen by people who had every reason to treat me like a guest and instead treated me like someone they had been waiting to fold in.

I was buzzing for weeks after that day. I am still buzzing a little, even now.

After the Great Ocean Road, something opened. I had slept enough. I had eaten enough chili scramble. I had begun to understand the heat. I had begun to understand the shape of the city. I had begun to feel the strange privilege of being far enough away from my familiar life that my familiar anxieties could not reach me with the same force.

So I did what I always do when a place starts to become real: I tried to live there.

I learned the routes. I walked the city. I made coffee stops part of my morning. I wandered through shops. I sat in parks. I let the tram system become less intimidating. I watched how people moved through the day. I tried to understand the pace, the posture, the casual rituals.

Melbourne was not what I expected. For some reason, I had imagined something smaller. More residential. Maybe a handful of skyscrapers and a lot of natural beauty around the edges. There was natural beauty, yes. But the city itself was enormous. Dense. Vertical. Alive. Dozens of skyscrapers. Millions of people. “Locals” by way of western Europe, Asia, America, and beyond. Tourists. Tennis players in town for the Australian Open. Workers. Families on their summer holidays. Students on their gap year. Everyone moving through peak summer as if the whole place had been turned up slightly louder.

I stayed at Nesuto Docklands, a serviced apartment building designed for longer stays, and it gave me exactly what I needed. A room with enough function to feel settled. Staff who paid attention. A base. Docklands was not where my heart ultimately landed, but it gave me the structure to arrive properly.

From there, the city became accessible. Melbourne’s central business district held me more than I expected. The range of it. The diversity. The public life. The shopping corridors. The laneways. The ease of falling into a coffee shop or a museum or a tram line or a park. There was a hum to it that I understood quickly.

I found Federal Coffee in the middle of Bourke Street and made it a mid-morning reset. Coffee. People watching. The ordinary pleasure of being briefly anonymous in a busy city that did not feel indifferent.

There are cities where anonymity feels like disappearance. Melbourne made anonymity feel like participation. You could be alone without being erased. You could sit with a coffee and watch the day move around you and still feel somehow inside the life of the place.

Family helped me see more than I would have seen alone. My cousin John, Lil’ John’s dad, took me to Sovereign Hill in Ballarat—an old gold-mining town where the early settlement story sits inside dust, costume, machinery, ambition, and that familiar human hunger for a better life somewhere else. Another day, John and his wife Loretta and her brother Stephen took me off-roading out to Craig’s Hut, an iconic wooden cabin perched in the mountains a few hours outside the city. Again, history and adventure. Again, people choosing to show me something not because they had to, but because they had listened closely enough to understand what might light me up.

I was not prepared for that kind of attention. I was not prepared for how emotional it would feel to have people I had just met make plans around my interests. Not vague plans. Not obligatory hospitality. Real plans. Roads. Museums. Mountains. Old towns. Coastal drives. Meals. Conversations. The kind of welcome that bypasses performance and lands somewhere deeper.

Melbourne felt like acceptance in a way I had not known before. The city gave me one kind of belonging. The family gave me another. And then, unexpectedly, strangers gave me another still.

I have a history of using dating apps as a way to meet people in new places. There are pros and cons to this approach. I know that. It can be messy. It can blur intention (both ways). It can create false intimacy or transactional closeness. But in Melbourne, something different happened.

Most people felt more grounded. Intentional. Physically present. That sounds simple, but it was not simple to me then. I was still in a re-explorative phase around my sexuality. Before leaving Philadelphia, I had met someone who made me feel, in a way that startled me, that I could imagine spending my life with a woman. Then I left. Ireland, Italy, Germany. Movement upon movement. City after city. I did not really lean into emotional intimacy during that stretch. I was traveling, yes, but also quietly holding something. Testing what I wanted. Testing what felt true. Testing how much of myself I was ready to let be visible.

In Melbourne, that testing became less theoretical. Sometimes someone wanted to show me a bar. Sometimes someone wanted to show me their favorite hike. One person wanted to help me understand public transit, so we rode trams through the city as if that was a perfectly reasonable way to spend time with someone new. Another bloke and I walked around Fitzroy one evening, then ended up lying in the grass of a local park as the sun went down, talking while bats moved above us.

That image has stayed with me. Not because it became something grand. Not because it resolved into romance. But because it represented a kind of ease I had not known to expect: Two men in the grass at sunset. No rush to define it. No immediate pressure to make it useful. No performance of hardness. Just bodies in a park. Conversation. Heat leaving the day. Bats circling overhead.

The strange intimacy of being beside someone while a city moves into evening around you. It disrupted something in me.

My expectations around male intimacy had been shaped by absence, guardedness, performance, tension, longing, and the long private work of figuring out what desire meant when it was not yet fully spoken. Melbourne did not solve that. A city does not solve a life. But it showed me something. It showed me that closeness could arrive through ease. That connection could feel grounded instead of frantic. That physical presence did not have to become immediate possession. That wanting could breathe.

For a few weeks, I had a routine.

That was when Australia clicked. Not at the airport. Not on Christmas morning. Not even on the Great Ocean Road, though that day lives in me as one of the great days of my life. It clicked when I stopped counting the trip and started inhabiting the days.

I had my own interests. My own routes. My own breakfast spots. My own coffee breaks. I saw Aunt Mary weekly. I made friends. I knew where to go when I wanted to work. I knew which neighborhoods pulled me in. I knew where I wanted to walk. I knew what kind of morning I could build.

At some point, I lost sight of the fact that I would have to leave. And, for the record, for anyone planning for nomadic existence, that is when a place becomes dangerous.

Not dangerous in the obvious sense. Dangerous because it starts making a claim. Dangerous because a life begins to take shape without asking permission from the life you already have. Dangerous because you begin to imagine ordinary things there. Groceries. Rent. A favorite table. A regular walk. A person texting you to see if you want to make the most of the time you have left, except the ache beneath that sentence is that the time is already measuring itself.

I remember trying to convince the bloke from Fitzroy that we should let whatever that was be what it was. To make the most of our time. To force ourselves to lean as far in as possible, even though I only had two weeks left in the city. Even though heartbreak was almost certainly guaranteed.

That is a difficult kind of honesty. Not because it asks for forever. Because it does not. It asks for presence without guarantee.

And maybe that is what Australia kept teaching me. Presence without guarantee. Joy without certainty. Belonging without ownership. A life glimpsed before it was secured. All the while, underneath the beauty, there was tension.

I had booked the trip on faith. I had verbal assurances that work would continue. I had reason to believe the year ahead was stable enough. But while I was in Australia, I learned that my biggest client at the time was losing their business after a period of gross negligence, and that the long-promised past-due balance on our earlier retainer agreement might not be coming at all.

By the time I was preparing to leave Melbourne, parts of my life felt suspended.

I was not walking around in a constant state of panic. That is important to say because it would be easy to flatten the story into crisis. It was not crisis in the obvious way. The trip had done something to my nervous system. The distance had changed how much urgency I could absorb. But the information was there. The uncertainty was there. The possibility that the security I had worked so hard to build might not be as secure as I had believed.

And still, I chose to live inside the trip. I am proud of that now. I am proud that I did not let uncertainty steal the whole thing from me. I am proud that I let myself be there. Fully. Not perfectly. Not without fear. But there. On the road. In the parks. At breakfast. On balconies. In museums. With family. With strangers. With the version of myself that had enough space to feel excitement again.

That feels connected to the moment I am in now.

I have been trying to align myself only with relationships and projects that feel secure, mutual, and in service of something real. Not because everything must be safe. Not because risk is bad. But because uncertainty created by negligence is different from uncertainty created by growth. One drains you. The other asks something of you.

Australia was risk. But it was not reckless. It was a leap toward life.

When it came time to leave Melbourne, I cried while packing. I was not sobbing. This wasn’t a total collapse. Just tears. Happy tears, mostly. Gratitude moving through the body with nowhere else to go.

I was texting with cousins in Ireland, trying to explain what had happened over those weeks. Trying to unpack the road ahead. The stops between Melbourne and Sydney. The days still to come. The return that would eventually follow.

And then I realized I did not really want to go back to Ireland either.

That realization complicated things. Ireland had been important. Italy had been important. Even that brief albeit long weekend in Germany had been important.

Each place has shown me something, stripped something from me, restored something in me, and redirected something around me. But Melbourne had done something different. Melbourne had not only given me experience. It had given me evidence.

Evidence that I could belong somewhere in a way that did not require shrinking.

Evidence that family could be expansive.

Evidence that male intimacy could feel warm and grounded.

Evidence that a city could hold ambition and softness at the same time.

Evidence that if I had just a few more weeks, a life might begin to take shape.

That was the unfinished business. Not a missed museum. Not a restaurant I did not get to try. Not a neighborhood I failed to fully explore.

A life.

I left Melbourne and drove toward Sydney by way of the southeastern coast. Originally, I had planned to move through that stretch in three to five days. I had expected Sydney to be the larger destination, the big finish, the iconic end. But Aunt Mary advised me to avoid spending too much time there and to give the coast as much room as possible. And, Aunt Mary is never wrong.

I am grateful I listened. I stopped first in Lakes Entrance, then Merimbula, then Batemans Bay. Motel rooms. Coastal roads. Water appearing and disappearing beside me. That particular kind of road-trip solitude where you are alone, but not lonely exactly. Just in motion. Your life packed into bags. Your next room waiting somewhere ahead. Your mind moving through everything that has happened and everything you do not yet know how to name.

Batemans Bay became a five-day-long slow-motion exhale.

For some reason, I remembered it as longer. Until writing this, I would have told you I was there for more than a week. Maybe that is because it expanded. Maybe some places do that when they give your nervous system exactly what it needs.

My room had two balconies overlooking one of the most beautiful natural marine spaces I have ever had daily access to. I could sit there and feel my lungs swell and release with the tide outside my window. That is not metaphorical in the decorative sense. It felt physical. Breath matching water. Body remembering how to release.

After Melbourne’s intensity, Batemans Bay gave me a different kind of belonging. Not social belonging. Elemental belonging.

Water. Air. Light. Tide. Balcony. Quiet.

I had other cousins nearby, about half an hour south, and I connected with them too. That mattered. (Partially because they brought me to the best Beef Basil Stir-fry known to man, and also the kinship.) But much of Batemans Bay was solitude in the best sense. Solitude without abandonment. Solitude with a view. Solitude that lets the body digest what the heart has been too busy receiving.

There was no romance in it. But there was a meeting that felt important: I met a local yoga teacher who seemed, in some quiet way, like a future version of myself. He had trained locally, earning his yoga teaching certification with a local practice, but he was also well-traveled. He moved between Australia, Europe, and Asia, personally and professionally. He had integrated movement, work, travel, place, and practice into a life that did not require the old division between ambition and freedom.

I remember thinking, I want to be like this guy. In this place. Not literally him. Not exactly his life. But the integration. The ease of it. The evidence that a person could build a life around movement without becoming ungrounded. That travel could be more than escape. That professional life could stretch across geography. That the body could be part of the work, not an afterthought to recover from after the work had taken everything.

Batemans Bay gave me that image: A man by the coast. Trained in something embodied. Connected to a local place. Moving through the world. Returning to water. Not frantic. Not endlessly proving. Still building. Still participating. Still free.

I had been thinking about all the ways I might integrate travel into my personal and professional life during the drive, and then there he was. A version of the question, standing in front of me.

That is one of the stranger gifts of travel. Sometimes the landscape gives you beauty. Sometimes the people give you welcome. Sometimes a stranger gives you a model.

After Batemans Bay, Sydney was hard. I spent three nights and four long days there over the Australia Day holiday. The city was packed. The sun was brutal. Crowds pushed me away from the major museums and tourist sites I might have otherwise tried to see. I mostly roamed the streets, sat in parks, and read.

Sydney did not hold me the way Melbourne did. But maybe it did not need to. By the time I arrived, I had already received the trip’s central offering. Sydney became contrast. A reminder that not every famous place becomes intimate. Not every destination asks to be claimed. Sometimes a city is impressive and still not yours.

That realization made leaving easier.

If Sydney had opened the same way Melbourne had, departure might have been unbearable. Instead, Sydney gave me heat, crowds, distance, and a quieter ending. I sat in the park and read. I let the days pass. I let the country begin to loosen its grip. Still, Australia as a whole stayed with me.

People often ask me, of all the places I have been, which was my favorite. I can see the question forming as soon as I mention Australia. The lights go on. They hold back just long enough for me to rattle through the list, but I can feel what they expect. They expect Australia.

For a long time, I did not say that. I would say, “Everywhere was different.” And that was true. Everywhere was different from the life I had been living in Philadelphia. Every place carried its own weather, its own lesson, its own version of aliveness. Ireland gave me one thing. Turin gave me another. Florence another. Verona another. Munich another. Melbourne another.

It felt too simple to name a favorite.

Then my mother was surprised when I did not immediately say Australia. “I thought you’d say Australia,” she told me.

Her surprise surprised me.

But maybe she could hear something I had not fully admitted. Maybe she had noticed the way I lit up when I talked about it. Maybe the evidence was there in my voice before it was there in my conclusions.

There is something in that. The way I almost cannot believe I did it at all. The way I still think about the heat of Christmas morning, Aunt Mary’s face, the cliffs on the Great Ocean Road, the bats over Fitzroy, the balcony in Batemans Bay, the chili scramble, the iced coffee with ice cream, the cousins who wanted to show me their version of the country, the room in Docklands where I cried because I had been so grateful to belong somewhere so quickly.

Australia did not become my favorite because it was perfect. It became important because it gave me a picture of the life I actually want to build.

A life with space. A life with movement, but not constant escape. A life where work does not get to colonize every hour of the day simply because technology makes me reachable. A life with chosen routines in cities that make me feel awake. A life with coffee shops and coastal roads and museums and family and physical presence and bodies in parks at sunset. A life where ambition is still present, but not at the expense of breath. A life where I can be both rooted and roaming. A life where the geography itself helps me remember what matters.

That is what Australia did to me. It took me far enough away from the familiar that I could hear a different rhythm. Then it placed me among people who seemed genuinely glad I had come. Then it showed me roads and coastlines and rooms and meals and conversations that made me feel, maybe for the first time in a very long time, that expansion did not have to be lonely.

I went to Australia to surprise Aunt Mary for her eighty-ninth birthday.

I did do that.

But Australia surprised me back.

It showed me that I could be received. That I could recover. That I could want more. That I could survive uncertainty without handing my entire emotional life over to it. That the future might not arrive as a five-year plan. It might arrive as a morning in a new city when you realize you know where to get breakfast. As a cousin, asking if you want to see something beautiful. As a stranger lying beside you in the grass while bats move through the evening sky. As a balcony where your lungs finally match the tide.

And once a place shows you that, you do not really leave it cleanly. You carry it forward. Not as nostalgia. Not only as nostalgia but as evidence.

Where You’d Find Me in Melbourne

Nesuto Docklands

80 Waterfront Way, Docklands VIC 3008

Nesuto Docklands was my base in Melbourne, and it worked beautifully for a longer stay. It is a newer serviced apartment building, which meant I had the structure and function of a furnished apartment without being fully on my own. The staff were excellent. Attentive, accommodating, and quietly aware of the details that make a longer stay feel easier.

Docklands was not ultimately the neighborhood I fell hardest for, but it gave me a steady place to land. If you are visiting during the Australian Open, it is especially practical. The location is relatively close to the tennis activity, and during my stay it was frequented by some incredible players. There was something surreal about recovering from jet lag in the same building as people whose bodies were tuned for peak performance.

Brick Lane

33 Guildford Lane, Melbourne VIC 3000

Brick Lane is the breakfast spot that turned me onto chili scramble. It sits close to Flagstaff Gardens, which makes it especially good for a slow morning. Breakfast first. A walk after. No need to rush the order of things.

Their “Eggs Any Way” was the beginning of my love affair with the Australian breakfast plate. I had been so tired that first week, so physically scrambled by the travel, and this was one of the places that helped me return to myself. Coffee, heat, eggs, a well-plated breakfast, the city waiting outside.

Flagstaff Gardens

309-311 William Street, West Melbourne VIC 3003

Flagstaff Gardens became one of those simple city pleasures. Not a grand destination. Not something you need to over-plan. Just a good place to walk after breakfast or sit for a little while when the body needs green space.

I think every good city needs places like this. Small resets. Breathing spaces. Public rooms without walls.

Federal Coffee

350 Bourke Street, Melbourne VIC 3000

Federal Coffee became my favorite mid-morning break in the CBD. It is centrally located, which means there is excellent people watching, especially if you have been shopping or wandering through the city.

I liked it because it felt easy to fold into a normal day. Not precious. Not overly designed around being discovered. Just coffee, movement, and the pleasure of sitting inside the pulse of the city for a while.

Melbourne Museum

11 Nicholson Street, Carlton VIC 3053

The Melbourne Museum is an easy recommendation, especially in midsummer when the heat starts to feel relentless. It offers the practical gift of air conditioning, but also the deeper pleasure of stepping into a city’s memory and structure for a few hours.

It is a strong midday break if you are trying to balance outdoor wandering with something slower and more interior. I found it grounding in the way good museums can be. A reminder that every place has layers underneath the version tourists usually see.

National Gallery of Victoria

180 St Kilda Road, Melbourne VIC 3006

The National Gallery of Victoria is another must-visit if you need a summer-day pause. It is spacious, cooling, and generous. A place where you can let the day soften around art.

I would not over-program it. Go when the heat is too much. Go when the city feels too loud. Go when you want to be surrounded by form, color, rooms, and quiet movement.

The Conservatory at Fitzroy Gardens

298 Wellington Parade, East Melbourne VIC 3002

The Conservatory inside Fitzroy Gardens is one of those places that feels small but memorable. It is worth seeing because it offers a slightly different register of beauty. Held, cultivated, floral, calm.

Fitzroy Gardens itself is also worth time. Melbourne has a way of giving you dense urban energy and then, suddenly, somewhere green enough to change your pace.

Industry Beans

70-76 Westgarth Street, Fitzroy VIC 3065

Industry Beans in Fitzroy was one of my favorite places to work from. It is a trendy roastery in a former warehouse, with innovative brunch options and strong house blends. It has the feeling of a place where people are doing things, making things, building things, thinking through things.

For me, Fitzroy was the neighborhood that felt most aligned. If I returned to Melbourne for a longer stretch, I would look seriously at Fitzroy or neighboring Collingwood. There was a creative intelligence to the area that made sense to me. Cafes, shops, parks, texture, a bit of edge, a bit of ease.

Fitzroy and Collingwood

Neighborhoods northeast of Melbourne’s CBD

Fitzroy was my favorite centralized neighborhood in Melbourne. Collingwood, right next door, also had the kind of atmosphere I would want to explore more deeply on a return.

These are the places where I could most clearly imagine a life taking shape. Morning coffee. Work blocks. Evening walks. A loose social rhythm. Interesting shops. Good food. People who seem to be building lives with intention but not sterility.

If Docklands gave me a practical base, Fitzroy gave me the emotional picture.

Country Road

Multiple locations in Melbourne

Country Road was a pleasant surprise. A lot of retailers in Melbourne carried familiar American or European brands, but Country Road felt distinctly Australian in a way I appreciated. It is still fast fashion adjacent, but the quality and design were better than I expected.

For men especially, they make a great short and a strong carryall. I bought an oversized adjustable tote there that I still use regularly, and people stop me all the time to ask where it came from. That is usually a good sign.

Great Ocean Road

Day trip from Melbourne toward the Twelve Apostles

The Great Ocean Road deserves its own post, and I may eventually write one. It was one of the most unforgettable days of my life.

If you have the chance to go, go slowly. Stop often. Let the road be the point, not just the destination. The coastline is astonishing, but so are the smaller moments. Eucalyptus in the air. A waterfall tucked away from the road. The strange joy of an Australian iced coffee made with vanilla ice cream. The feeling of coming around another bend and realizing the landscape still has more to give.

The Twelve Apostles are worth seeing, even if the number has changed. But the day is bigger than that. It is road, water, cliffs, conversation, and the generosity of whoever is willing to experience it with you.

Torquay

Surf Coast, Victoria

Torquay was one of my favorite places in all of Australia. We passed through it briefly during the Great Ocean Road day, and I went back two or three times before leaving Melbourne.

It is a huge surf location, but it did not feel overcomplicated to me. There is a small commercial corridor, then mostly you and the water. People seemed to be there simply to be there. To surf. To walk. To sit. To exist near the sea without making too much of it.

It had that rare quality I always notice in beach towns I love. A sense that life has been organized around the water, not merely placed beside it.

Sovereign Hill

Bradshaw Street, Ballarat VIC 3350

Sovereign Hill is an old gold-mining town in Ballarat, and it gave me a window into the history of early settlement and the hope that pulled people toward new land. It is immersive, historical, and interesting in the way reconstructed places can be when you let yourself take them seriously.

I went with my cousin John, which made it more meaningful. Some places are better when seen through family. You are not only learning the history of a country. You are learning what someone thought was worth showing you.

Craig’s Hut

Mount Stirling, Victoria

Craig’s Hut was part of an off-roading day trip with cousins, and it gave me another version of Australian landscape. Less coastal. More rugged. Mountainous. Expansive in a different register.

The hut itself is iconic, perched in a setting that feels almost cinematic without needing to be exaggerated. The drive, the elevation, the remoteness, the company. All of it made the day feel like a different chapter of the same welcome.

The first thing Germany gave me was cold.

Not the polite, soft kind you ease into. The kind that meets you on an exposed train platform and doesn’t negotiate. I had flown in from Donegal, missed my connection, and was standing on the upper deck of Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof waiting for the last train south. It reminded me of 30th Street Station in Philadelphia. That same semi-exposed, industrial grandeur.

I finally boarded the train.

If there’s one thing Germany gets deeply right, it’s trains. The Deutsche Bahn felt less like public transportation and more like a moving hotel. Warm. Smooth. Quiet. I remember sitting back and watching the dark countryside scroll past the window and feeling the cortisol finally drain out. I had made it. I was moving. The train would do the rest.

By the time I checked into Motel One in Stuttgart it was nearly midnight. Cold, tired, hungry, and the kitchen had already closed. The bartender looked at me the way bartenders look at late arrivals. Unbothered. Competent. Slightly amused.

“I’ll take a gin and tonic,” I said.

Liquid dinners are underrated.

My friend Mike’s company is headquartered in Stuttgart. He had been trying to get me over there for years. It’s hard to say no to travel when you’re already moving. And yet I had managed. I had no real expectations for the city. No real interest, if I’m being honest. I wasn’t sure I could have found it on a map six months earlier.

He was in back-to-back meetings all of the first day. So I did what I always do in a new place. Found a reliable omelette. A good cup of coffee. A bookshop. An outdoor retailer. Another coffee, this one “a roadie” as I watched the city move.

Stuttgart is organized around Königstraße - a long, wide pedestrian corridor that everything else seems to orient itself around. Not unlike the central arteries you find in other European cities. But there’s something grounded and gritty about this one. Less performative than some. The stores were prepping for Christmas but nothing had been fully switched on yet. The city felt caught between versions of itself.

What surprised me most was how many people were out on a regular Thursday. Moving, shopping, sitting in the cold. Not tourists. Just people. Living their day in their city.

The Globetrotter in Stuttgart deserves its own sentence. It’s the German experiential equivalent of REI. Multi-level, immersive, slightly overwhelming in the best way. The staircase is lined with thousands of photographs from customers, from expeditions all over the world. I stood there longer than I planned to. Something about that wall caught me off guard. All those places. All those faces. I bought a set of SealLine dry bags I still haven’t used. No regrets.

That first full day ended with schnitzel and a Dinkelacker. Both earned. Mike and I walked off dinner through the Christmas market, cups of mulled wine in hand, as expected in late November in Germany. Then he mentioned a speakeasy he’d heard about.

We found it. We stayed too long. At some point we were outside a McDonald’s at an hour that should not be named, attempting to bribe the staff into making us a burger before they closed. They declined. Diplomatically. We walked home.

Day two started the way most days start anywhere — breakfast, coffee — and then opened up. The Altes Schloss. The Markthalle. The art museum a friend in Italy had recommended.

There’s something that happens around the second day in a new city. The initial disorientation settles and you start to actually see the place. Stuttgart did something to me that second day. I found myself genuinely attached to it. In the “I could stay another week” kind.

I still want to go back. Dürrbachklinge and Wernhaldenpark are said to be beautiful hikes. The Mercedes-Benz Museum has been pulling at me since I left. There’s still so much there I didn’t get to.

The drive back to Frankfurt did not go as planned.

Mike had been excited about the Autobahn. The legendary highway. No speed limit. The kind of road you hear about in other countries. We sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic for what felt like the entire route. I think we peaked at 50 kilometers per hour. The train I had originally booked, the one Mike had talked me out of, whipped past us in the other direction at what looked like lightning speed.

We laughed about it. What else can you do.

Mike flew home early the next morning and I had Frankfurt to myself for two days.

The first one followed the usual pattern. Omelette. Coffee. Bookshop. You know how it goes by now. Then late in the afternoon I took a notion and wandered into the Städel Museum. The crowd was surprisingly thin. I had the corridors mostly to myself. The Städel holds world-class work and to land a quiet Saturday afternoon, that kind of access feels like something you’re getting away with.

That night I ate a burrito alone in my hotel room and watched terrible television. No shame. No apologies. No regrets.

Day two: breakfast at Café Hauptwache. At the next table, a group of guys in their 20s were piecing together the previous night. Proper breakfast talk. A stag party. The details were chaotic. Probably illegal. I appreciated the preview of what lay ahead for whoever was getting married.

After breakfast I walked up to Grüneburg Park and back through the city, stopped at Coffee Fellows before the Frankfurt Archaeological Museum. Then I looped through Römerberg and found a bench in Nizza Park. The river was there. The light was good. Retirees were being directed off cruise ships and corralled toward the old town for dinner and drinks. They looked content. Or at least prepared.

That evening I went back to Römerberg and had dinner at Alten Limpurg, a traditional German restaurant right on the square. Busy. Loud. Exactly right.

One thing stayed with me from the whole trip.

We were out one night in Stuttgart, the three of us, when someone mentioned the flags. The way you don’t see German flags the way you see American flags. Not on private homes. Not hanging from porches. Not on bumper stickers.

Mike put it plainly. Germans don’t do that. Not after what their nationalism produced. There’s a shadow side to pride, to power, to any big beautiful plan that goes badly enough. They’ve lived inside that shadow. They built their culture in the aftermath of it. So the flag stays folded.

I sat with that one for a while. Still am.

This was my first proper “quick pop out of Ireland.” My friends there talk about it like it’s nothing. Hop over to Germany. Pop to Barcelona. Be back Sunday. It didn’t feel especially convenient to me. Not for my lifestyle, anyway. But it gave me something I wasn’t expecting: a genuine taste for the German cities, a warmer feeling for the people, and a fuller picture of a country I had only held in the abstract.

What it also clarified was something I had been quietly sitting with for a while. A long weekend is a preview. A postcard. What I actually wanted was more time on the European mainland. Something with real roots. Somewhere I could stay.

But that’s a different postcard.

Where to Find Yourself in Stuttgart

Cafe Hegel Hegelplatz 1, 70174 Stuttgart

A breakfast place in the truest sense of the thing. Unhurried. Reliable. The kind of morning anchor a new city needs. I came here both days and left each time feeling settled. If you need somewhere to start the day before you’ve figured out what the day is, start here.

Leonidas Chocolate Shop (inside Königsbau Passagen) Königstraße 28, 70173 Stuttgart

Belgian chocolates inside a beautiful old arcade. I came in looking for gifts and stayed longer than I needed to. Worth a slow browse even if you leave empty-handed. The building alone earns a step inside.

Altes Schloss (Old Castle) Schillerplatz 6, 70173 Stuttgart

A mid-day activity with no agenda required. The castle sits at the center of the old town and holds a regional history museum inside if you want to go deeper. I spent most of my time in the surrounding square. There’s a pace to that part of the city that slows you down in a good way.

Carls Brewery Stauffenbergstraße 1, 70173 Stuttgart

A proper dinner spot. Good beer, good food, the kind of atmosphere that earns a long evening. Go with someone. Order more than you think you need.

Jigger & Spoon Calwer Str. 21, 70173 Stuttgart

A speakeasy that delivers on the premise. Find it late. Bring someone you don’t have to explain yourself to. It earned us a very long night.

Where to Find Yourself in Frankfurt

LUME Boutique Hotel (a Marriott Autograph Collection Property) Wiesenhüttenplatz 36, 60329 Frankfurt am Main

Boutique feel without boutique anxiety. Comfortable, central, well-staffed. A better base than I expected and one I’d go back to without hesitation.

Café Hauptwache An der Hauptwache 15, 60313 Frankfurt am Main

Start here. The building anchors the pedestrian zone and the breakfast is dependable in the best way. Good light in the morning. Worth arriving before the city fully wakes up.

Nizzawerft Nizzawerft, Frankfurt am Main

A footpath running along the Main river. I walked it twice and it was different each time. Quiet in the morning. More leisurely by afternoon. Worth the time in either direction, with no particular destination in mind.

Städel Museum Schaumainkai 63, 60596 Frankfurt am Main

One of the better art museums I’ve spent time in. The collection is world-class and the building doesn’t get in its own way. Go on a quiet day if you can. Lunch at Cafe Wacker afterward held up.

Römerberg Römerberg, Frankfurt am Main

The old town square. Go in the evening, after the tour groups have cleared out. Walk the cobblestones without a plan. The architecture earns a slow look.

Alten Limpurg Römerberg 19, 60311 Frankfurt am Main

Traditional German food on the square. Busy in the way that means things are going well. I ordered the obvious things. They were the right call.

Sullivan Cocktail Bar Seehofstraße 30–32, 60594 Frankfurt am Main

A good room, a well-made drink, a place to end the night without needing an occasion.

I had been looking forward to the train from Florence to Verona for weeks. The ride into Florence earlier that summer had undone me in the best way. Fields of sunflowers. Small farmhouses scattered across Tuscan hills like someone had placed them there by hand. That train felt like a promise. I wanted to see what the other side of it looked like.

There was also Venice waiting in between. A weekend I had once considered a lifetime trip. I moved through it with awe and disorientation and saved the processing for later. Verona was different. Verona felt like the place I had been moving toward all along.

The moment I stepped off the train, something in my body registered. It was subtle but immediate. A tightening in my chest that did not feel like anxiety. A quickening. A recognition. I did not wander through the streets to my Airbnb. I moved with purpose. I felt pulled. As if the city had a hand at my back guiding me forward. I remember hurrying to unpack, to grocery shop, to settle in. It felt urgent. As though I could not afford to waste a single day of it.

The apartment was almost comical in its perfection. A top-floor one-bedroom that felt newly restored and waiting for someone who would notice the details. Direct elevator access into the unit. A double oven. Skylights that flooded the living room with white afternoon light. Two air conditioning units. After months of adapting to less-than-ideal circumstances, it felt indulgent. Safe. Designed.

I worshipped it.

Once the bags were unpacked and the fridge was stocked, I did what I always do. I walked into town to get my bearings. I need to understand where I am geographically before I can understand how I feel emotionally. I look for the place that will become my place. The evening destination. The anchor.

For years now, I have ended my days the same way. A long walk toward a fixed point where I can rest, read, and people-watch. In Philadelphia it was Washington Square. In other cities it has been a church step, a harbor bench, a quiet park. In Verona it became the southeast side of Ponte Garibaldi, or sometimes the stone steps near the visitors center beside the Arena. The bridge was technically too close to the apartment, so I would extend the walk. An hour or more through narrow streets, past wine bars and couples and tourists clinking glasses, until I felt ready to land.

Verona does not feel real at first. It feels like a set. The stone. The arches. The way the light hits the river at dusk. I had never fully connected the city to Romeo and Juliet, but much of the world had. The line into the courtyard beneath Juliet’s balcony stretched endlessly most days. I remember standing off to the side, looking at the bronze statue, watching people wait for their turn to touch it. I Googled it on the spot. Were they real? No. Shakespeare had never even been there. It did not matter. The myth was enough.

I skipped it. Even when friends came to visit from Philadelphia and wanted to see it, I stayed outside the courtyard and let them have their moment. Verona offered me something quieter. Something less crowded.

My days felt normal there. That might sound small, but it was not. After months of movement and uncertainty, Verona allowed me to drop into routine. Morning yoga. Real yoga, on a proper mat for the first time since leaving the States nearly six months earlier. Grocery shopping at the same market. Coffee. Writing. Client work in the afternoons. Dinner. The long evening walk. Reading before bed. It was the first place in Italy where my nervous system softened.

I had a serendipitous visit from friends during that month. We had met shortly before I left Philadelphia and somehow our timelines overlapped again in Italy. They came up from Florence for the day. We wandered through the streets without agenda. Ate lunch slowly. Shopped for handmade jewelry. Laughed in that full-bodied way that only happens when you feel known. There is something about being seen in a foreign place by people who understand your origin story. It steadies you.

But Verona was also the launch point for something much larger.

I booked it partly because of its proximity to the Dolomites. A friend of mine had always dreamed of seeing that mountain range. I carried a quiet hope that she would meet me there. She did not. That weekend became mine alone.

It began with inconvenience. Europcar oversold their fleet and my reservation was canceled. A full day lost to rerouting. The replacement vehicle was an electric crossover. Northern Italy is not built for efficient EV road trips through mountain terrain. Charging stops doubled the travel time. Then Google Maps led me directly through the center of a town along Lake Garda. Diners moved their chairs. Pedestrians pressed themselves against storefronts as I crept through narrow streets, mortified. Later, in Brixen, I scraped the entire side of the nearly new vehicle trying to squeeze into a compact parking space. It had less than nine hundred kilometers on it when I picked it up. I stood there staring at the damage in disbelief, I’d be bringing it back with 900 scratches. Thank God for full coverage insurance.

Externally, it was chaos. Internally, something else was happening.

In Brixen, after the scrape and the charging stop, I sat for a late lunch and a coffee to regulate myself. That was when I noticed the couple standing in the middle of the walkway. An older man with bandages across his face and a cast on his arm. His wife beside him, steady and attentive. Then came the sound of cheering and clicking from what sounded like hundreds of freehubs. Dozens of bikers rode into the square, circling them with affection and pride. I learned that the man had started the riding group years earlier. He met his wife through it. The annual summer meetup brought friends from across Europe. He had fallen off of his bike the day before and been injured badly enough that, at his age, meant he would likely never ride again.

He held back tears as he said it. I did not.

I left that square and sobbed in the car. Not for him alone. For something larger. For the fragility of identity. For the way we anchor ourselves to the roles we play. For the inevitability of change.

The drive into the mountains shifted after that. The chaos fell away. The scrapes on my car seemed to disappear. The trees grew denser. The peaks more dramatic. The air thinner and cleaner. I arrived in Cortina d’Ampezzo at dusk and checked into Hotel Serena Cortina. A small mountain hotel with floral window boxes and preserved architecture that felt deliberate. This was my first true European mountain town experience. I walked through it in awe. The care. The respect for place. The sense of continuity.

I had planned a hike for the following day. I did not make it. The lost time, the car issues, the late arrival. I pivoted instead. I made it my mission to return to one of the glacial lakes I had passed on the drive in. It was nearly flush with the road. Opalescent. Still.

I arrived just before eight in the morning. The lake was in shadow. A few cars in the lot. A shared quiet anticipation. We were all waiting for the same thing. The sun was preparing to crest the mountain in front of us. Slowly. Patiently. The parking lot filled. Camper vans opened. Families spilled out with bikes and backpacks. The sound of morning chatter rose around the water. It felt like the first day of school. Reunions. Excitement. Familiarity.

A man parked beside me told me this was their annual family gathering. Switzerland. Germany. France. Italy. They came from everywhere for this long weekend at the end of summer. Biking by day. Eating together by night. He spoke about it with pride. Belonging.

My stomach flipped. Not in jealousy. In clarity.

This is who I want to be, I thought. The one excited to gather. The one prepared for the terrain. The one grounded enough to expand.

I felt a brief wave of self-pity for not having packed better. For not being properly prepared for mountain weather. For missing the hike. Then something steadier replaced it. Gratitude for being there at all. For the shift that had already taken place.

As the sun finally reached the peak and light spilled across the water, I thought about my Gran. It had been weeks since we had spoken directly. The nurses answered the phone. Updates were vague. Family communication was thin. Standing there, watching the light reach the lake, I felt a calm I had not allowed myself in months. Permission. To stop forcing updates. To stop trying to manage what I could not control. To accept that I was where I was meant to be. That she knew I loved her. That the outcome was inevitable whether I hovered or not.

I drove back to Verona with a stillness that surprised me. The city received me differently then. Not as a backdrop for routine, but as a container. I walked the bridge that night with tears on my face. Verona did not ask anything of me. It simply held me.

The morning after my return, Gran died.

Most of my time in Italy had felt circumstantial. Ninety-day visa limits. Apartments falling through. Deadlines dictating geography. Verona was the only city I chose without urgency. I placed it last on purpose. Something in me believed that if Turin or Florence failed to give me what I needed, Verona would.

It did.

I left feeling grateful and fractured. Italy had shifted me. Losing Gran would shift everything else. Her funeral was two weeks away. My life felt both fully activated and suspended in midair. Verona became the place where those two realities overlapped. Where grief and routine coexisted. Where I felt most like myself while preparing to become someone new.

That is what this place did to me.

It steadied me before the ground moved.

Browse the Gallery

If You Find Yourself Here

If you ever find yourself in Verona, and only if you want to, these are a few doors I would open again.

Arena di Verona

Piazza Bra, 1

There is something about sitting inside the Arena at night that collapses time. I attended Viva Vivaldi. The Four Seasons Immersive Concert performed by Giovanni Andrea Zanon. The projections were beautiful, but the true experience was the stone itself. The scale. The fact that people have been gathering here for centuries. Go in the evening if you can. Let the music carry you. Let the architecture remind you how small and how connected you are.

Pasticceria Flego

Corso Porta Borsari, 9

This is the place you go when you want to feel a little undone by sugar and craftsmanship. The pastries are precise without being sterile. Beautiful without trying too hard. It fits best in the late morning. Order something you cannot pronounce. Sit with it. Notice how much care went into it.

Elk Bakery – The Garden

Via Cappello, 39

Tucked behind the main cafe is a garden that feels slightly outside of Italy in the best way. The menu blends Mediterranean, Asian, and American influences without apology. It was the only place in town where I found proper iced coffee. That mattered more than I expected. Go when you want something familiar but still thoughtful. It is a soft landing spot.

Detour (Outdoor Shop)

Via Goffredo Mameli 5

Detour is the kind of shop I look for in every city and rarely find. An outdoor recreation store that feels intentional rather than transactional. Thoughtful brands. Technical pieces without the big-box energy. Staff who actually use the gear they’re selling.

Museo Archeologico al Teatro Romano

Rigaste Redentore, 2

If I could guide anyone to one museum, it would be this one. The walk up is part of the experience. Ancient relics. Terraced views. A cemetery that feels reverent rather than eerie. It holds layers of time without spectacle. Visit when you want to feel the continuity between what was and what remains.

Osteria al Duca

Via Arche Scaligere, 2

This was my favorite dinner. Roast chicken with vegetables. Pasta arrabbiata on the side. A gin lemon that appeared from somewhere in the back of house as if by magic. It is intimate without being precious. Go hungry. Stay longer than you plan to.

Gelateria La Berta

Lungadige Sammicheli, 25

A few steps from the river. Ideal after an evening walk. The kind of place where you can linger on the edge of the water and let the day settle. I often paired it with a stop at L’Accademia nearby for a drink. The crowd leans young and artistic. It feels local. Unpolished in a way that I trust.

None of these places are secret. None are definitive. They are simply the ones that met me where I was.

Verona is not loud about what it offers. It does not chase you. It waits. If you let it, it will become a place of rhythm. Of routine. Of quiet recalibration.

It was for me.

Florence did not want me at first.

Or maybe it did, and I mistook the resistance for rejection.

The timing matters. Late July through late August. Peak season stacked on peak season. Heat pressing down like a physical thing. Americans everywhere. Loud. Oblivious. Hungry in that particular way we get when we think we’re entitled to wonder. I hadn’t seen so many of us in one place in years. I had forgotten how we move through the world when we travel. Not gently. Not curiously. We scrape. We consume. We take photographs of things we don’t know how to look at.

I arrived already tired. Already defensive. Already convinced that Florence was going to ask something of me I wasn’t sure I had to give.

I was there on deadline. Most of the month was spent applying branding to an international wellness travel group. It gave me an excuse to stay inside. A justification for hiding. I told myself it was the Americans. The crowds. The heat. But really, it was the intensity of being seen. Florence does not let you disappear. Not even when you try.

The apartment was impossibly central. Two blocks from Piazza della Signoria. Down a narrow alley behind Via dei Neri. A stone’s throw from Santa Croce, which is to say, a stone’s throw from the center of the human swirl. The building dated back to the thirteenth century. Towering. Medieval. Dramatic in that way that makes you feel small but also strangely held. Four stories. Twenty-foot ceilings. Doors and staircases built for bodies larger than mine, or perhaps for history itself. The windows were handmade. The glass uneven. Light bent as it came through.

By midday, the city was unbearable. Grocery shopping felt like a strategic operation. A peaceful walk was out of the question. You would rather wait. You would rather starve. The sun sat directly on your shoulders and the crowds pressed in from all sides. Florence at noon is a test of patience and surrender. I failed it regularly.

Evenings were different. The tours thinned. The sun softened. The city exhaled. I learned the back ways quickly. Winding alleys that skirted the piazzas. Routes that traded beauty for efficiency and sanity. I chose the grocer farther away because the walk was calmer. Centrality, I was reminded, is often the bane of a carless existence. Access is useful. Proximity is expensive.

I had just gotten back on the dating apps at the tail end of Turin. Thank God. Loneliness dissolves faster when connection is a swipe away. When everyone you meet is quietly aware of the same thing: this has an expiration date. There is a freedom in that. A tenderness. A permission to be honest without needing a future.

I told myself I only wanted friends. That wasn’t true. I wanted love too. Or the shape of it. The movement of it. I love love. I love the way it aligns things inside me. The way it moves through, rearranges, leaves something better behind even when it goes. Especially when it goes.

My days found a rhythm. Morning food shops. Endless coffee. Yoga when I could bear the heat. Work in long stretches. And then evenings walking the piazzas slowly, looking into restaurant windows, watching families and couples and friend groups savor a moment they might never get again. A week. A weekend. A day. I was swimming in something most people only touch briefly.

Every night, without fail, I ended up on the stone wall along the Arno. Kindle in hand. A few feet in either direction from Gelateria Morè, on Lungarno degli Archibusieri. I would sit for hours looking at the Ponte Vecchio, listening to musician after musician sing into the night. The songs blurred together eventually. What stayed were the fragments of conversation from passersby. Laughter. Arguments. Confessions. Florence is the site of many firsts. Honeymoons. Empty nest trips. First passports. It is also home to an alarming amount of conflict.

People bickered constantly. Couples fought through dinners. Sometimes screamed. I was struck by how many people allowed small, provincial suffering to eclipse a once-in-a-lifetime moment. I couldn’t tell who was choosing it and who needed it. Maybe both. Some people don’t know how to accept the manifestation of their dreams.

People loved to tell me how lucky I was. To do this. To work from anywhere. To spend a month in Florence. I always complicated it for them. I talked about the time difference. The deadlines. The strain. Then I’d soften. My clients are great. I couldn’t do this without them. I wasn’t deflecting. I was trying to make the truth livable for both of us.

Another evening home was the stone bench beneath Loggia dei Lanzi. Bronze statues watching from the 1500s. Perseus holding Medusa’s head as if it were an afterthought. Tour groups flooded through during the day and returned at night for aperitivo and emotional reckoning. I spent hours there with gin lemons, wondering why I struggled to accept this version of myself. There was no question that I was doing exactly what I had always wanted to do.

I took my first international trip at twelve. Ireland. Something lodged itself in me then. A restlessness. Ants in my pants that never left. I grew up without much consistency. Ten places to call “home” before ten years old, but all of them family. A community of grandparents, aunts, uncles, parents who took turns raising me and welcoming me in. There were schedules instead of roots, but there was care. There were containers. Florence made something click. This wasn’t chaos. This was familiarity.

I was made for this.

Nomadism didn’t feel brave or novel. It felt practiced. Inherited. The ability to belong quickly. To leave cleanly. To find intimacy without permanence. That recognition landed heavily.

Some moments softened it all. Every Saturday morning, I walked to Piazzale Michelangelo. Twenty-five minutes. Through San Niccolò. Residential. Hilly. Calmer. Tourists who thought they knew better gathered there, which made it paradoxically peaceful. Florence rewards slow starts. Quiet mornings.

One morning, a stranger offered me his bike in Giardino dell’Iris. No agenda. No collateral. “It’s free,” he said, handing me his address. “Bring it back when you’re done.” I almost didn’t take it. Old stories surfaced. Not worthy. Too much. Just pretend you went. Then I chose differently. I rode the fucking bike.

The city fell away quickly. Toward Baronta. The roads shook beneath me. Less prepared. More honest. Giovanni, my host, had told me the countryside was right there. He wasn’t exaggerating. In fifteen minutes, everything changed. Cypress trees. Open sky. My body caught up to itself. Then I got scared. The heat. The hunger. A man tapped my shoulder and handed me water. He owned a small restaurant nearby. Opened it because his father did. Hoped his son would want it too. He made me breakfast. No menu. Eggs. Spinach. Bread from the night before. A cheese that could be currency.

Life rushed back into me. I rode home the long way through Isolotto.

Over the course of the month, I met architects. Designers. Makers. People who showed me Florence quietly.Antique shops on Via dei Serragli. Opera singers practicing in chapels at night. The place on the Arno where you can sit on a ledge at sundown if you know where to look.

I was in Florence because I had to be. That’s what I thought. A non-refundable Airbnb. Logistics. Momentum. Now I know better. Florence is not about spectacle. It’s about timing. About restraint. About letting yourself take up space without demanding anything back.

I spent weeks looking for the magic in obvious places. Halfway through the month, someone told me Florence would find me when it was ready. It did. On a bike. In an omelet. In bells ringing me home.

Florence is magic. If you stop chasing it. If you wait.

If you let yourself be found.

Where to Find Yourself in Florence

Ristorante Boccadama

Piazza di Santa Croce, 25/26r, 50122 Firenze FI

Early morning. Quiet square. A cappuccino and an apricot croissant that did exactly what it needed to do. Nothing more. Nothing less. This was my version of breakfast in Florence, and I never tried to improve it.

Casa Buonarroti

Via Ghibellina, 70, 50122 Firenze FI

My favorite museum anywhere. Undersold. Intimate. Michelangelo’s work without the crush. His home. His hands. His presence. If you do one cultural thing in Florence, let it be this. Everything else can wait.

I Fratellini

Via dei Cimatori, 38/r, 50122 Firenze FI

Over-marketed. Crowded. Still worth it. I resisted listing it. Then I remembered honesty matters more than credibility. The sandwiches are excellent. Eat standing. Move on.

Serre Torrigiani in Piazzetta

Piazza dei Tre Re, 1, 50123 Firenze FI

An outdoor speakeasy tucked into a pocket of the city. Green. Inclusive. Perfect for a weekday aperitivo when the heat breaks and the city softens.

Trattoria 13 Gobbi

Via del Porcellana, 9R, 50123 Firenze FI

The best dinner I had in Florence. Partly the food. Partly the company. I ordered the Tuscan chicken as a second meal. No regrets. Let yourself linger here.

Honorable Mention: Antico Ristoro di Cambi

Via Sant’Onofrio, 1R, 50124 Firenze FI

If timing or fate had shifted slightly, this would have been the one. Old walls. Loud praise. Food that travels across the room before it reaches your plate.

I didn’t mean to land in Turin.

That feels important to say up front.

I had planned for Rome. I had imagined Rome. I had oriented myself toward Rome in the way you do when you think you know what a chapter of your life is supposed to look like. Then, very close to the moment of departure, Rome fell through. The apartment disappeared. Prices spiked. Summer surged. I was standing in Ireland, already unmoored by bureaucratic delay, staring down the reality that I had to choose something quickly or lose the thread altogether.

A friend I barely knew said, casually, that Turin was cool. Creative. Gritty. Worth experiencing.

So I booked it.

The entire month. Sight unseen.

I didn’t research the city. I didn’t research the apartment. I didn’t even look closely at photos until the weekend before I left. When I finally did, Google Maps served up images taken on what must have been the single worst day of the year. Gray. Wet. Heavy. Rain slicking the stone. Fear set in immediately. I remember thinking, What have I done? Was I about to spend July inside, sweating, lonely, and stuck?

That fear was wrong. Completely wrong.

Turin was bright. Elegant. Lively. It was quieter than Rome, yes, but not asleep. It moved with intention. It felt lived-in. It felt like a place that wasn’t performing itself for visitors. And almost immediately, it asked something of me.

Language was the first friction point. Italian was everywhere. French followed closely behind. English was rare, or at least it felt rare to me. I had done six weeks of Duolingo. I had not taken it seriously enough. I felt that acutely. Ordering coffee became an exercise in humility. Grocery store interactions required focus. Small exchanges carried weight. And layered underneath all of it was shame.

I’m in their country. I should speak the language.

That voice was loud. It followed me through the day. It made everything take longer. And yet, slowly, it did something else too. It slowed me down in a way I could not avoid.

The heat enforced this. People warn you about an Italian summer, but you cannot understand it until you step into it. I left Ireland in seventy-degree weather and landed in ninety-degree heat. There was no air conditioning in my apartment. None. At first, it felt impossible. The air was thick. Sleep was light. The days stretched. And then, somehow, my body adjusted.

You really do get used to it.

Rain came often, but it did not cool things off. It only added texture. I used to laugh when it rained because it seemed to bring more people out into the streets, not fewer. Maybe everyone just wanted to confirm that the moisture on their skin was, in fact, rain and not sweat.

The heat dictated everything. My days found a rhythm quickly because they had to. Grocery shopping early. A stop in the park. Coffee. Yoga. Journaling. Work until dusk. And then, as if summoned, the entire city took to the streets.

From six to eleven every night, Turin walked.

Families. Couples. Teenagers. Elders. Everyone. I am not exaggerating when I say the city emptied into itself. I joined them. Night after night. I developed a route without realizing it had become one. From my apartment near Massimo and Pio, up toward the Royal Palace. Zig-zagging back through side streets. Down into Piazza San Carlo. Window shopping along Pietro Micca long after the stores had closed. A stop at Gelateria La Romana. Then home.

The people-watching was unmatched. I felt like a camera in a film. Silent. Observant. Absorbing. I learned how to kill time in Turin because I absolutely had to. There was nowhere to rush to. Nothing to conquer. The city didn’t reward urgency.

This was also where something heavier landed.

I was in Turin when I accepted that I could not save my grandmother.

I had been carrying a kind of false hope with me. A belief that if I stayed organized enough, strategic enough, relentless enough, I could control the outcome. I spent days soliciting doctors. Interviewing lawyers. Mapping scenarios. Building a plan to remove her from an abusive and neglectful living situation and bring her home to Ireland.

But reality does not bend simply because you want it to.

The moment it broke open for me is etched into my memory. I was standing under one of Turin’s porticoes, those massive stone coverings that line the city center, built centuries ago to protect royalty from the elements. It was pouring. I was leaning against the wall, too hesitant to cross the street. One ear filled with the sound of rain slapping pavement. The other pressed to my phone.

The lawyer was being kind. Direct. Unflinching.

“What’s the end goal here?” he asked.

Then, quieter. “We cannot save people.”

I stared at a crack in the cement. A small, triangular break in the stone. I listened.

“You can rescue her from this situation,” he continued. “You can protect her from the harm and neglect she’s been receiving. But the people doing this are not going to stop. It sounds like, to me, ‘four years of this’ you said, they’ve made that clear.”

I didn’t interrupt him.

After a long pause, I asked the only question I had left.

“Okay. What can I do?”

He waited. Then said, simply, “It sounds like you both need to find peace.”

That sentence followed me everywhere after that. Finding peace became the intention of my days in Turin. Not productivity. Not resolution. Peace. First for my nervous system. Then for my spirit.

There is an irony I still think about. One that feels too perfect to ignore. My life has always been shaped by a quiet tug-of-war between my two inheritances. Italian-American on my mother’s side. Irish-American on my father’s. As a child, my mom had primary custody, but my grandmother’s house on my dad’s side was where I always wanted to be. It was where I felt aligned. Accepted. Welcomed. At home.

So I left America to pursue life in Ireland. Thinking, perhaps unconsciously, that I could guarantee that alignment if I just placed myself close enough to it. And then, due to bureaucratic delay, I had to leave Ireland. And I landed in Italy. For a summer that would end, three months later, with the loss of the most steadfast pillar of support I have ever known.

And also, strangely, with the deepest sense of self I’ve ever had.

Turin showed me another side of myself. One that mirrored my mother’s lineage. The way people moved. What they valued. What they did not waste time on. The city was clean. Orderly. Intentional. Trash was taken out daily. Sometimes multiple times a day. You bought only what you needed. Nothing lingered without purpose. It was a culture of lightness that did not feel careless.

When the weight of my grandmother’s situation became too much, I fled for a weekend. I went to Milan to see Taylor Swift. This surprises people. I am a closeted Swiftie. She lives high on my Spotify Wrapped every year. Always in the top one percent of listeners. I needed to be inside something collective. Something loud. Thousands of people singing All Too Well badly and together.

It worked.

Milan felt electric. Fashionable. Connected. I saw the Duomo for the first time. I do not think I will ever see another cathedral like it. The hotel had air conditioning and I luxuriated in it to the point that returning to my apartment in Turin felt like punishment. That part makes me laugh now.

When I left Turin, I felt overwhelmed with gratitude. Moved by the surprise of it. I remember telling my friend Omar how lucky I felt that Rome had fallen through. How lucky I felt to have trusted a stranger. To have trusted myself. To have stayed. To have walked. To have chosen more whenever I could.

Turin was not my introduction to Italy in the way people usually mean. But I am endlessly grateful that it was mine.

Where to Find Yourself in Turin

If you find yourself in Turin, and only if you want to, these are a few doors I would open again.

Sweet Lab
Via Principe Amedeo, 39, 10123 Torino TO, Italy
A small café across from my apartment that saved me more times than I can count. Reliable coffee. A genuinely good breakfast sandwich. Comfort without fuss.

Via Roma
Central Turin
A grand, open-air shopping corridor lined with porticoes. Think American mall scale, but entirely outdoors and woven into daily life. Even after hours, it is worth walking.

Valdo Fusi Skate Park
Via Accademia Albertina, 10123 Torino TO, Italy
A surprisingly grounding place to sit with a book. People of all ages gather here. Skateboarding. Talking. Existing. It felt communal without being performative.

Caffè San Carlo
Piazza San Carlo, 156, 10123 Torino TO, Italy
An ideal afternoon pause. Coffee. Something sweet. A chance to sit still and watch the square breathe.

Real Chiesa di San Lorenzo
Via Palazzo di Città, 6, 10122 Torino TO, Italy
Architecturally striking and quietly powerful. Worth stepping into, especially if you enjoy noticing how light moves through space.

Royal Palace of Turin Art Collections
Piazzetta Reale, 1, 10122 Torino TO, Italy
The collections here are expansive and humbling. They tell a story of accumulation, power, and preservation that feels uniquely intact.

Monumento a Casimiro Teja Area
Behind Piazza delle Erbe
This small corner of the city held my heart. Casa Broglia offers sprawling patio seating and food that encourages lingering. Pizzum next door is a fast-casual fallback when things get busy. The magic is in the cluster. Stay awhile.

Passion Sport
Corso Regina Margherita, 22/f, 10153 Torino TO, Italy
A locally owned specialty retailer for hiking, camping, and outdoor gear. Knowledgeable staff. Thoughtful selection. A reminder that good retail still exists.

Osteria Al Tagliere
Via Corte d’Appello, 6, 10122 Torino TO, Italy
Casual. Cozy. Old-world in the best way. Known for cured meats, cheeses, and Piedmontese specialties. The kind of place where time stretches.

Gelateria La Romana dal 1947
Via Santa Teresa, 6/B, 10121 Torino TO, Italy
This became my go-to not just for the gelato, which is excellent, but for the warmth of the staff. It is the kind of place where service itself feels like a small kindness, and that mattered more than I expected.

The Beach Nightclub
Murazzi del Po Gipo Farassino, 22, 10124 Torino TO, Italy
In summer, this is where the city gathers after dark. Packed. Sweaty. Alive. A DJ worth listening to and a crowd that feels present.

And finally, the independent booksellers.
They line the major streets. You will find them if you walk. I can’t give you an address. That feels right.