Florence blog

Laurel, oregano, garlic, and chamomile, are plants that we use daily in our kitchen and are essential ingredients to some of our tasty recipes. A good sauce for spaghetti normally includes some bay leaves, a Neapolitan pizza has some ground herbs and dried oregano and we all know it’s good to drink a chamomile tea as a digestive after a good dinner. However, despite knowing about the culinary uses of plants there are other lesser-known applications that could change our assessment of these plants and their value in our lives.

Our kitchen is full of wonderful, magical and medicinal plants that have been used by different cultures throughout history and, of course, have served to do more than give a good flavour to soups or improve digestion.

Here is some more information about the medicinal and magical properties of some plants used in our homes:

Garlic: Medicinal Properties: Digestive, antiseptic and blood purifier. A small piece of a garlic clove with a glass of water should be taken in the morning.

Magical properties: Protection Spells. Hang a braid of garlic in the doorway of the house or kitchen. To deal with dangerous situations carry a clove of garlic in a linen bag.

Chamomile: Medicinal Properties: Digestive, anti-inflammatory and helps heal skin.  Make an infusion of 4g chamomile in 100 ml of water, to drink or wash the affected skin.

Magical properties: Prepare the mind and body to perform magic spells by drinking an infusion of just the flowers to purify your spiritual energy.

Laurel: Medicinal Properties: Helps digestion. It is used in tonics.

Magical properties: Favours fame and success and protects you from bad energy. Perform a spell to attract good energy with a laurel branch in your right hand and a laurel wreath on your head.

Oregano: Medicinal Properties: Drink an infusion of oregano leaves for headaches, cramps and intestinal pain.

Magical properties: This herb accompanies the dead on their journey to the afterlife in many cultures, and its magic helps us to cope with profound changes in life. It must be burnt in a silver cup when a relationship ends or someone dies.

Wormwood: Medicinal Properties: Opens the appetite, eases stomach pain, muscle relaxant. The leaves are used in infusion.

Magical Properties: The herb of the traveller:  Put some leaves in a bag and take it with you for a safe and happy holiday.

Finally to have a perfect holiday, apart from carrying a bag of wormwood, you should drink a cup of Melissa, a soothing herb very fashionable today and has the magical power to soften the wounds of love. With these recipes to improve your life, you only need to rent beautiful apartments in Florence and enjoy the magic of Italy, a land full of ancestral traditions.



Art has no limits. And it shows the work done by Chris Trueman, a California painter who rose to fame after making a portrait called “Self-Portrait with a Gun” (Self-Portrait with a Gun) using 200,000 ants.

Trueman based his portrait on an old photo, a yellowed reminder of his childhood. To implement his idea the artist reshaped image in the photograph using ants. Contrary to general opinion, it cost him a lot to get a hold of them. The project was rather expensive because each order of 40,000 ants cost him $ 500 but the investment proved to be worth it when Trueman finished the portrait with the image of her brother dressed as a cowboy holding in his hand the 22 calibre rifle his father and was able to ask for 35,000 dollars for the completed painting.

The painter admits that having to kill the ants disturbed the painter, and he took a few years to complete it. The artist acknowledged that killing the ants was hard, and painting with them was harder: he resorted to using tweezers and resin paint for the picture to support the ants and give it that characteristic old photograph glow…

During the project, Trueman had doubts about killing ants but wanted to continue painting so as to reach his goal, thinking that the first batch that he killed should not have to die in vain.

People have shown a lot of interest in buying his work after it was hung in a San Diego gallery. The painter and was happy that the portrait made it out of his studio for and is now being seen and enjoyed by visitors to the gallery.

Do you also perceive art in a special way? You don’t need to commit anticide to prove you are an artist, just rent Apartments in Florence and be inspired by a city where you can breathe in art at every corner.

Love is a complicated issue, and although many find it hard to believe, not only the heart is responsible for these strong feelings. Now, a new study has revealed that when a person in love is abandoned or rejected by their lover, the same mechanism which is responsible for drug addiction is activated in the brain.

When the person who left the other is not around, at least according to researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, their image and memory functions like a kind of drug. In reaching this conclusion, they studied the brain activity of 15 people who had been broken up with and were still hurting. The results were pretty simple: When looking at photos of their exes, the same neural mechanism was triggered as is generally triggered in cocaine addicts.

The study consisted of studying 15 people who were still deeply in love with those who had left. They looked at photograph of former partners and the researchers determined that the activity that occurred in their brains with an MRI.

When they looked at their exes, there was more activity in the nucleus accumbens, which according to other studies, is where activity is generated when addicts to cocaine consume their drug of choice.

In the study, published in the journal called Journal of Neurophysiology, explained that the previous findings reveal that being rejected in love generates the same neural mechanism which exists in various addictions. If you are having a tough time because your partner left you, your best bet is to rent apartments in Florence and visit some of the best museums in Europe to completely forget about this rough patch.

It is no stranger that we live in an age where we are bombarded with stereotypes of “perfect” beauty. The media machine and advertising become our role models yet often do not reflect the tremendous diversity we see in everyday life.

Apparently, since the 60s the proliferation and refinement of these stereotypes has increased for several reasons, among the most important is the rising popularity of television and the growth of the fashion industry, together with cultural changes which occurred in the 70s. Since then, a whole system has formed around consumer ideals of beauty: Spas and beauty centres, as well as huge industries dedicated to diets, fitness, cosmetics and plastic surgery and so on.

We see these messages every day, but rarely do we stop to think a second of the impact these images have on our lives? Apparently, life is so fast that we are caught in this spider’s web to consume and be consumed by these beauty stereotypes without thinking for even a second if this is what makes us happy and more so, if these “ideal types” really have anything to contribute to our diverse realities.

Today many women think that being beautiful equals being thin and unless we look “similar” to the beautiful models we will not be successful, especially in our relationships.

We must be critical and demystify these models and standards, live healthy, and liberate ourselves from the pressures imposed by this beauty myth, which is nothing more than a fairytale told by the beauty industry.

To be truly happy we must free ourselves from these traps and love ourselves as we are. A relaxing vacation does definitely helps… Rent apartments in Florence, relax and enjoy your free time in this beautiful city!

Imagine you’ve saved for years for retirement. You wake up one day and discover that your accountant has left you penniless. You almost 70 years old and you divide your time between the Buddhist monastery where you practice meditation and your home, where you write and make music. What to do after making this kind of discovery. In the case of Leonard Cohen, you get back to work full steam ahead. In the last five years, since he discovered that his manager was stealing from him, he has recorded several new albums and is touring constantly. This year, the legend will tour Europe and Australia. On September 1, you will have the opportunity to see him live in Florence in the historic Piazza Santa Croce.

Over the years, his music has gained a reputation for being incredibly poetic, depressing and spiritually rich. His songs place themes of love, sex, art, depression and divine grace under the microscope. Before establishing herself as a musician and songwriter, he had already published two novels and several editions of poetry. But he decided to leave Canada, his native country, to migrate to the United States in 1967, because he thought that he might be more successful as a singer than a writer, and at that time, folk music was very fashionable. He frequented the Andy Warhol’s Factory and hung out with figures like Janis Joplin. During this period he released several albums and was acclaimed for being one of the best lyricists of his generation. However, he avoided the trap of getting stuck in the world of folk, and throughout his career he has released several albums inspired by various genres such as jazz, cabaret and experimental music.

Singers like Judy Collins, Jeff Buckley, Martha Wainwright and John Cale have sung versions of his songs which in some cases even surpassed the commercial success of the original songs. Rent apartments in Florence to live your spiritual adventures of love and self-knowledge. They might not be the Chelsea Hotel of the 70s, but they are comfortable, and safe to say that seeing this legend perform will be a magical experience.

There is a phrase that says: “Men don’t really grow up, their toys just get more expensive” … If this saying holds true, the first things that come to mind are a Playstation, a Harley or for the the luckiest ones a high-end convertible. But let’s just say that grown-up toys are a bit different from the tugboats of old.

Today the sex toy market is bigger and better than ever. Although at first glance it may appear that sex toys are usually directed toward women, sex toys are not just for girls. It is now easy to find stimulators designed for male pleasure, from vibrators to stimulate the prostate to toys designed for masturbation. Masturbation can have many positive effects and will allow you to better understand your body and know what turns you on, in order to share your desires and fantasies with your partner and to develop a healthy sex life.

There many male sex toys which are designed to stimulate the “male g-spot”. These toys stimulate the prostate and the perineum. Most are made of soft materials and feature adjustable vibration. Those made of silicone are hypoallergenic and can be easily washed with soap and water or even in the dishwasher, making them very practical and easy to clean.

We also turned up a flashlight that doubles as a discreet masturbatory toy. Called the Fleshlight, its exterior shape imitates a flashlight, but, after removing the cover, you find a sleeve which simulates a woman’s vagina. Use with lubricants is recommended to prevent painful friction. The toy has a pleasant texture and feel thanks to ‘Real Feel Super Skin’, which has made this masturbatory aide number one in worldwide sales.

According to the creators, repeated use of this device not only provides pleasure, it strengthens erections and improves sexual prowess. It also offers the convenience of being easily and discretely portable, so you can experiment and savour sensual sensations wherever you go. Its internal cavity is filled with a soft, flexible material to recreate an authentic sexual penetration, and numerous bumps and folds amplify sensations. There are different versions and textures available so you can choose the one that suits your needs. Now that you know about all these new toys, why not rent apartments in Florence and discover new worlds of pleasure

I once surveyed my friends and acquaintances about which they believed was more important: food or sex. The responses were striking to me because many of them said food- maybe they have not experienced the kind of sex that I am accustomed to.

One told me that if you do not eat, you die; while if you do not have sex obviously the consequences are not so dramatic. Although I’m not completely sure I agree with his logic and am even less willing to see what happens if I fast from sex; scientifically, it is true that a man can survive only a month to a month and a half without food. Honestly, I can’t imagine surviving that long without sex. However, I know there are no hard and fast guidelines for sexual frequency, and everybody is free to maintain the sexual rhythm they enjoy or are permitted.

With this I began my exploration of how to combine these two pleasures without underestimating the privileged role of sex list of priorities. My research turned up something for fans of sweets and a great way to combine eroticism, pleasure and delicious treats. With edible body paint, you can explore the best of both the erotic and the gastronomic realm, as well as express your playful and artistic side.

After dinner you can prepare a delicious surprise for you your partner where you are the dessert. Kits are sold in sex shops so that you can paint your body and flavour it with drawings, phrases, and anything else you can think of.

It’s quite simple: the paint is a chocolate which you apply with a brush, or the “paint” may also come in many flavours: caramel, strawberry, vanilla, banana, peach, blackberry etc. Combine the aphrodisiac power of chocolate and sensual brush strokes to increase your sensations. Try this new way of awakening and stimulating the senses, excite your partner and then eat it all up like a good boy or girl.

Why not rent apartments in Florence and find out whether sex or food is first on your list? If you still if you want to eat chocolate, you can try one of the best chocolates in the world, Amedei, which is produced in the Tuscan region or myriad other Tuscan delicacies…

As shown by recent studies in communication, it seems like gentlemen still have a lot to learn. We submit into evidence the 20 most disastrous and uninspired pick-up lines that a woman can hear.

1. Can I use your phone? I need to call my mother and tell her I met the girl of my dreams.
2. Excuse me, can you tell me what time is it? I would like to know the exact moment I fell in love.
3. Hello! Do we know someone in common who can introduce us?
4. So you’re that beautiful girl everyone’s been talking about…
5. Do you believe in love at first sight or do I have to pass by again?
6. Are you sure we didn’t meet in another life?
7. Your father must be a terrorist because you’re a bomb.
8. Excuse me, I lost my phone number, could you give me yours?
9. Do you have a map? I think I’ m lost in your eyes.
10. You must be very tired from running around all day in my head.
11. Did the sun just come out or was that your smile?
12. If I were a pilot, I’d take for a spin in my plane but since I’m not, you’ll just have to fly in my heart.
13. Why is a girl as pretty as you are talking to an idiot like me?
14. I think I’m lost. Can you tell me how to get to your heart?
15. If you don’t want to sleep in my arms, I can sleep in yours?
16. Should we talk or continue flirting from afar?
17. Now that I’ve met you, your search is over.
18. Excuse me, were you talking to me? A: No… Aah, Then you can start now.
19. I wanted to show these flowers how beautiful you are.
20. I might not be the most handsome boy, but I’m the only one who is talking to you.
Be original, Rent apartments in Florence and let the Italians pick you up…

Why are most people so embarrassed to admit that they masturbate? I mean we all do it, and there’s nothing wrong with it: on the contrary, it lets you get to know what you like. Yet, today, many people publicly deny that they perform this sexual practice and even prohibit their partners from performing it, because they associate masturbation with relationship problems. Worst of all is the myth that masturbation causes blindness and other diseases. Nothing is further from the truth. Of course, it is a healthy and satisfying sexual practice that gives the practitioner pleasure. The only problem now is that you might end up in jail if you do it in the wrong place… avoid beaches, parks and trains at all cost.

Many people feel guilty when they masturbate- it is a shameful secret. Perhaps that is why people usually masturbate when home alone and in a private place, like under the covers or behind the door (and sometimes with the lights off). However, one must know that first of all, touching oneself is a natural act, which you shouldn’t be ashamed of. First of all, you need to accept that it is a natural drive, and that many people enjoy auto-erotic experiences.

Be open about the practice and you may discover that you don’t need to compare it with partner sex; it is a valid and valuable practice on its own. However, exploring it with a partner could take it to new levels. You could take a trip to Italy with your partner to explore new levels of intimacy. Rent apartments in Florence and discover yourselves anew: feel the exciting and penetrating gaze of your partner as they take note on how you give yourself so much pleasure.

While Florence might not have as many meeting places and clubs for LGBT travellers as larger cities; it does have something of a gay scene. There are active groups in the fight for the rights of gays and lesbians that focus on partnerships such as Arcigay or Il Giglio Rosa which organize several activities and initiatives. The Tuscan capital was also the first Italian city with a gay nightclub, Tabasco Bar (Piazza Santa Cecilia 3r). It opened in 1974, and today remains one of the main gay venues of Florence, with an international clientele. The club is located in the historic centre, behind the Piazza della Signoria, in a XVI century building. They play all sorts of music: techno, house, disco and rock, plus there are shows and cabaret.

Other famous hits on the local gay scene in Florence include the Flamingo Bar, Bar 85 or Crisco Bar in Via Sant’Egidio, in a XVIII century building. On one floor is the bar and on the other you can dance. During some weekends there are striptease shows or drag queens. Another site that is located in the central area around Piazza Santa Croce, inside a building that originally housed the Church of San Giuseppe, is the suggestive Yag Bar, open all year. You can also check out the recently opened gay cruising bar, the Silver Stud in Via della Fornace.

For a completely relaxing day after your marathon cultural tours we recommend taking a rest in the Florencebaths centre, which since 1991 gives the gay community of Florence a place to enjoy a relaxing atmosphere with Swedish massage, a wooden Finnish style sauna, Turkish baths, whirlpool, etc. Beverage service is included.

Dive into this fascinating city in good company. And discover the gay scene in the capital of Tuscany. That, though is not the biggest, it offers sophisticated and evocative environments within historic buildings. For a comfortable and friendly stay, close to all major tourist attractions, choose apartments in Florence.