Take Me Up to the Top of the City
You haven’t seen the world until you’ve seen it from above.
For someone who is absolutely terrified of heights, I sure do like to get high. I don’t know what compels me to get as high as I can wherever I go (except in New York City — more on that later), but when I make it to the top, the view is almost always worth the effort.
I don’t always take the easy way up. I appreciate the convenience and comfort of riding an elevator all the way to the top of a skyscraper or summiting a mountain by automobile or cable car. But there’s something about completing a major climb on foot — or running up that hill, as I often did while living in Cape Town for a year and while spending five weeks in curvy Sarajevo — that gives me an unmatched sense of accomplishment.
Ascending on foot makes me feel like I’ve earned the stunning view at the top. That’s exactly how I felt as I was standing in front of the replica of the King David statue on Piazzale Michelangelo, looking down at Florence, which was more than 100 steps below.
By now, I’ve gone up, up, and away in a number of cities on six continents. When I first moved to…
