I've found myself with an unusual amount of down time, so I'm taking this opportunity to try and being my blog up to date. Florence is finally sunny again so I'm siting in my bed with the windows and shutters open listening to the hustle and bustle of the piazza down below - there's even an accordion player playing an upbeat Italian tune!
The past week has flown by, but I'm not surprised...I've done so much and hardly spent anytime in my apartment because I'm always being active in the city. I LOVE the class that I am taking! I have been 4 times now and gotten into a great routine. My teacher's name is Margherita Abozzo and she knows literally everything about everything. I will ask her a question about a building, she'll know it; I'll ask about a Catholic custom, she will have the answer; anything at all, she is a wealth of wisdom! Fortunately her English is also really good - this hasn't been the experience with some of my other ISA friends, there are major language barriers which makes class awkward for them and last forever. But anyways, on to my class. We meet in the same classroom that I had the orientation in. I've discovered that its referred to as the "Pink Ballroom." We usually listen to her lecture for about 45min to an hour and then go out and visit the site that we have just studied. Monday was the Duomo and the Baptistry, Tuesday was Santa Croce, Wednesday was Santa Maria Novella, and today we went to the Foundling Hospital and into San Lorenzo. So basically I have visited almost all the big churches in 4 days! I still have yet to visit Santa Spirito across the Arno, but we will go there with our class next week. We have a quiz tomorrow over the lectures, the places we have visited, and the first chapter of our textbook about Florentine Architecture. I'm not too worried for it, I'll just get a good night's sleep tonight and be ready for it! The class meets from 12-2:15 and we end up where ever we just visited. Merrit Owens, Amy Schuester (new friends from New Jersey), Jessica and I are all in that class, so after we're done, we usually grab a quick and cheap lunch like a panini or bruschetti or slice of pizza. After that I try to see something else either with that same group or with riley, ellen, holiday, and melissa. I'm going to tell y'all about some of the highlights that I have visited this week:
- Palazzo Pitti (Tuesday afternoon) - this is a really cool palace across the Arno that now is a museum where you can visit the Royal Apartments, a Modern Art Gallery, and the Galleria Palatina. We walked from room to room and admired the extremely ornate decor on the ceilings and walls. It looked like it was post Renaissance, so I'd say 1700s and 1800s. The walls were covered with silk brocade designs in light blues, deep reds, bright green, and mustard yellow. There were at least 15 paintings in each room - it was hard to see them all! It was pouring rain outside so we spent almost all Tuesday afternoon there soaking it all in. When we finished in the exhibits, we had a cappuccino at the museum bar then made a run for it back to our apartments. I stopped at H&M and bought a cute dress, shirt, and shorts for like 50 euro - not too bad! It was a great afternoon adventure.
- Dinner with the post grads at Aqua all Duo (Monday night) - Riley Mundiger, Brooke Greisbaum, and Sara Bailey are currently in Italy, traveling all over for a graduation present from their parents. They are staying in Florence so naturally we were going to see them and wanted to meet up. The five of us met them in front of Santa Croce and then we walked to this restaurant that many people had recommended to us. We all had delicious salads, mine was caprese of course, and juicy steaks! The two flavor options you could get were Balsamic and blueberry...pretty weird but made for a delicious meal! Our reservations were really late (9:45) and they didn't seat us till 10, so we walked out of there full of red meat and red wine a little after midnight! After that, we went to this bar called Kukuya (also a referral from the last summer Florence gals) for some "dragon beer." This special drink was a beer that is super strong and pretty tasty. It def lived up to its hype! After that we followed the American student crowd to club called "Yab." I can't really tell you anything more than I will never step foot in that place again. It was an insane mixture of super drunk students and the black dudes who sell the umbrellas on the street when it rains. It was nasty so we called it a night and went home.
- Day Trip to PISA! (Wednesday afternoon) - the rain was starting to get our mood down, so Riley, Ellen, and I planned to go to Pisa for the afternoon after class! It was still raining hard in Florence and there was supposed to be rain in Pisa, so we figured why not and we boarded a train for the hour long journey there. The train station is actually a lot closer to my apartment that I thought. I rain there in the rain in about 5 min from my apartment. We left around 3:45 and got back around 10pm - it was such an amazing day! Once we arrived, we saw the city a little but our main priority was to take pictures at the Tower. We bee-lined down the main street and traversed the whole town in about 20 min. We took out touristy pictures with about 1000 other people with the same idea. It was incredible to realize how something so silly like holding the tower up in a picture can unite the world! We heard so many languages spoken and people watched from the grassy lawn right at the base of the Baptistry. We enjoyed some gelato and a Becks beer in a perfectly blue sky with huge white puffy clouds. It was so perfect! We read in my travel guide of a place to eat for dinner so we asked the polizia where it was. They gave us a different recommendation to eat so we went with their place. It was another delicious Italian meal - bread with olive oil and balsamic, bruschetti, caprese salad, Chianti red wine, assorted cheese plate (served with some honey!), and penne with bolognese. It was extremely satisfying. After that we window shopped down the Corso Italiano and crossed the bridge over the Arno and admired a beautiful and violent sunset. Great trip and well with the 10 Euro round trip ticket.
- Ferragamo Museum (Thursday afternoon) - This afternoon Ellen and I paid 5 Euro to go into this exhibit that was really cool. All of the high end shops are situated along the Via Tornabuoni and its really fun to walk past all of them to see whats in the windows. The museum was down the stairs to the left right when you enter the boutique. It told all about the life of Salvatore Ferragamo and how he made such a huge impact of the shoe industry. Some of the cool things we saw were the wooden molds of shoes for famous movie stars like Katherine and Audrey Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman, and Sophia Loren, paintings made for Salvatore by Andy Warhol, and these weird stuffed tropical birds, about 20 species in an artist arrangement. It was pretty interesting and a good way to spend the afternoon.
This week has been awesome! I just love wandering down the streets whether I'm alone or with my friends or roommates. Today I saw the Situation from Jersey Shore on the way to class. This has been my only sighting of them so far! But we found out where they are working and plan on going there tomorrow night to be waited on by them - then maybe see them out after!! It's really cool to weave through the throngs of tourists following guides and listening to headsets - I feel like I actually live here now and am not just visiting! I'm trying to update this thing more, but the sunshine is now out and internet is still spotty - plus there's so much more left to uncover! Love y'all very much and report back soon!
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