I followed the river toward the Uffizi Gallery where I stopped, enchanted by the scene below. It’s “a search for the delectable, delicious, almost gustatory delights of the moment,” as they put it. Other times, an object or architectural detail that piques your interest — a gate, a gargoyle — provides a portal to another time. Stories of vanished ages can be triggered by a single stone, then explored back home through books and websites. Being in a big city among so many strangers can be at turns exhilarating and disturbing.

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Persons: Arno, Fred B, Bryant, Joseph Veroff, Puccini’s, Robert K, Merton, Elinor Barber, bento, Amer, plumb, Edgar Allan Poe’s “, Marie Roget, ”, Walter Benjamin, “ Charles Baudelaire Organizations: Uffizi, Lincoln Center, Metropolitan Opera House, Columbia University, Science, Metro, Poet Locations: Firenze, Florence, New York, Tokyo, Japan, Istanbul, Paris