The last time I was in Florence, in the summer of 2011, I hoped to visit the San Lorenzo Mercato Centrale, a famous food market in the heart of the city. I love food, I love markets, and it sounded like a treasure trove of exciting new discoveries. Alas, I made the rookie mistake of forgetting to check if the market had different opening hours during the month of August when I was there, and assumed I still had a couple of hours left to see it on my last day. Everyone warns a

I used to paint - a lot. Many nights after I got home from work, whether I was sad, happy, angry, or just plain confused, I'd splash my emotions out onto a canvas or sketchpad. In fact, I ended up creating so many works that I ended up displaying them in a local cafe, even selling a number of them. Which is why when I was so delighted that, after a visit to Casa Batlló in Barcelona, Spain, I felt artistically inspired again. Something about this place just awoke my creative s