Pistoria

I stayed with a friend, Sam, just 20 minutes outside of Florence in a little town called Pistoria. It was a small community where everyone knows each-other and not a place you would visit as a tourist. Sam and I went for drinks in the central piazza a few times, and I was even lured into a dark corner by a smooth-talking Italian boy one night. 

I loved being immersed in the language, speaking to his family in Italian over delicious 3 course meals each evening. We celebrated Sam's mothers birthday one evening with a beautiful torte topped with a variety of glazed fruit- Tanti Auguri!

Pistoria Cemetery

It was in Pistoria that I discovered, just down the road from his house on a late afternoon stroll- my first European cemetery. It is the most beautiful I've seen, now in comparison, to the ones I came across on the rest of my trip. 

All the locals from the town are buried here.

This one in particular had something dark and delicate about it, from the burnt glass cross to the dead flowers lying across each grave.