My goodness! Sometimes I feel like all I ever write about is Florence!

But fear not avid reader, if you exist, I’m not always going to blog about Florence, it’s just that I had to tell you this story.

Back when I first arrived in Tuscany as a naive 18-year-old fresh out of a very conservative, all-girls’-school in Australia a couple of my fellow girlfriends decided we should spend the weekend in Florence.

Living in Australia, you never really get the feeling that cities are dangerous. Melbourne is like one big happy town: if you don’t do anything stupid at night harm rarely comes to you.

Unfortunately, we didn’t know that not everywhere is as warm and cuddly as Melbourne

We arrived after a long bus trip to realise that our “cheap but classy” hostel was in the back streets of Florence, quite a distance from the centre and quite isolated.

But that’s not what freaked us out. What freaked us out was THE DEAD BODY LYING IN FRONT OF THE ENTRANCE WAY!!!

No joke, from what we could understand, the unfortunate young man was hit by a car outside our hostel while riding his scooter. It happens all the time in Italy.

But before you say, ‘Well that’s technically not Florence’s fault’, the dead body set the tone for our entire vacation.

We could see him from our room. His foot wasn’t covered and the police weren’t exactly in rush to move the body – Italian police handle everything including murder ‘con calma’.

These days, I think that body was an omen. After we had digested this terrible scene and a delicious kebab- if you are ever going to buy a kebab in Italy make sure you’re in Florence: the capital of surprisingly good Turkish food! – we decided to visit the centre.

Now this story could go on for ages, but its suffice to say that we stayed out late, got drunk at an American saloon bar and decided to walk back to the hostel.

I have never been so scared in all my life.

Five foreign girls walking down the dark alleyways of Florence lost singing American show tunes at the tops of our voices may sound like a fun Saturday night abroad, but it wasn’t.

Car loads of guys stopped to offer us directions, some stopped just to call us “puttane” and one tried to get us in his car.

Finally I put a stop to the madness and called a cab. The others complained about the waste of money, but I didn’t care as long as it saved us from ending up in a ditch somewhere.

Unsurprisingly, I was not too popular with these girls after that. The dead body was nothing compared to the fear I felt when I was walking down alleyways being jeered and leered at. I left the next day and those girls never spoke to me again

So sorry to rain on the fun and frivolity that has become my blog, but I can’t not warn you too.

Don’t get caught up in the incredible beautiful of any city in Tuscany or indeed Europe. Florence can be just as dangerous as it is breathtaking. You’re probably thinking ‘no shit Sherlock‘ – and believe me, I wasn’t stupid, I knew nighttime wandering was dangerous, but I gave into peer pressure and ignored my better judgement.

And it’s not just young, drunk girls. Any foreigner wandering the outskirts of a city like Florence – and our hostel was well and truly on the outskirts – is at risk – crime in Florence is higher than most other Italian cities.

So watch your back and don’t put yourself at risk, unless of course your dream is die in a gorgeous Renaissance city!