Open Letter

Apparently, open letters are quite popular in the celebrity world, so we decided to write one of our own. Here goes....


Dear Florentine Duomo Operators,

We LOVE your city. We really do. We love it so much that we woke up way earlier than we would normally wake in order to visit your famous Duomo. Jamie is a big fan of Brunelleschi and the prospect of seeing his masterpiece up close really set her heart to racing.

There is, however, one bone we need to pick with you. While we sincerely appreciate the signs you have so carefully printed in English for our convenience, telling us where to enter,where to exit and especially where to pay, we think it would be helpful for you to give those who may suffer from severe panic and anxiety a heads up when entering the duomo.

We thought we were the luckiest people in the world, getting to enter the duoma ahead of the 400 people in line. But little did we know that the line we were in was the line straight to the top. It's not the fear of heights that concerns us. It's the two foot wide passageways with four foot tall ceilings, poorly lit with little to no circulating air. Dark, dank, and dingy. Stinky, stuffy and spiraling. It's especially difficult given that this limited space is for TWO WAY traffic.

We're talking a major, ugly freakout of "Excorcist" proportions just waiting to happen. See, we don't take kindly to confined spaces, and clearly we were not alone on this matter. Several dozens were on the verge of nervous breakdowns themselves. It's just not healthy.

So from now on, please, oh please, warn people before sending them up this Renaissance tower of terror. Again, we love Florence, we really do. And we're GLAD we went up, we really are. But next time, we'll bring our flask and a maybe a few sedatives.

te amo,
Jamie and Jennifer