My biggest regret about Florence is that I did not confirm until the last day that Florence is the setting for the opening chapters of A Room With a View. I had suspected it all along, but forgot to check when I was on the internet; at last, I was in an English-language bookstore and was able to look it up.

Back at home, I am reviewing everything through the RWAV lens. Santa Croce cathedral: where Lucy goes on the first day with Miss Lavish, and bumps into the Emersons. The Piazza della Signoria: where Lucy witnesses a murder and swoons. The Uffizi Gallery: where chivalrous George Emerson escorts Lucy to recover from her shock. And of course, the Arno: where George discards of Lucy’s postcards, which have been tainted with the dead man’s blood.

And of course, the Arno. “I want so to see the Arno!” Lucy cried, having been promised by the Cockney Signoria the eponymous room with a view.

As we had a borrowed copy of Rick Steve’s Italy 2005, Lucy had her Baedeker’s.

She walked about disdainfully, unwilling to be enthusiastic over monuments of uncertain authorship or date. There was no one even to tell her which, of all the sepulchral slabs that paved the nave and transepts, was the one that was really beautiful, the one that had been most praised by Mr. Ruskin.

Forster is poking gentle fun at Lucy, of course, but I admit to being overwhelmed myself by all there was to see in Florence, and thankful for some outside guidance. (I'm extremely grateful to my friend Jae, who studied in Florence for a semester, and offered us many pages of recommendations for all tastes and appetites.)

“Tut, tut! Miss Lucy!” [said Miss Lavish.] “I hope we shall soon emancipate you from Baedeker. He does but touch the surface of things. As to the true Italy -- he does not even dream of it. The true Italy is only to be found by patient observation … One doesn't come to Italy for niceness … one comes for life. Buon giorno! Buon giorno! … Look at that adorable wine-cart! How the driver stares at us, dear, simple soul!”

Things must have changed because we didn’t see many dear, simple souls. We did see men and women zooming at top speed down narrow cobblestone streets on their Vespas, racing taxicabs and delivery trucks to run over at the crosswalks. If they were considerate, they might honk before impact.

Florence is a maze of narrow winding streets, picturesque, indistinguishable.

Luckily, it’s a small maze, full of churches and monuments, so if you get lost you just keep walking until you pop out on a piazza and recognize something.

In a series of those grey-brown streets, neither commodious nor picturesque, in which the eastern quarter of the city abounds … [Lucy and Miss Lavish drifted] into another Piazza, large and dusty, on the farther side of which rose a black-and-white facade of surpassing ugliness. Miss Lavish spoke to it dramatically. It was Santa Croce.

We stayed in Santa Croce, in a apartment not far from the church. We had our own view, of sorts. Not very majestic but certainly typical.