First Week in Florence

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Trip Start May 22, 2011 Trip End Jul 12, 2011

  Florence, Toscana, Italy
Saturday, May 28, 2011

After a long journey, we arrived in Florence around 6:00 p.m. local time on Monday, May 23rd. Coincidentally, a classmate for our study abroad program was on the last leg of our flight, from Frankfurt to Florence. Once we checked into the hotel for the first night, the three of us grabbed quick panini (sandwiches) from a cart and ate them at tables across the street from the hotel, overlooking the Arno River. Exhausted from our travels, we then retired to the hotel for the evening.

Tuesday, May 24th was a full day. We enjoyed a buffet breakfast in the hotel (clearly designed for tourists since Italians generally have very light breakfasts on the go) and met our professor, study abroad program coordinators, and classmates for program orientation at the hotel. Following the orientation, everyone was taken by taxi to their respective apartments in Florence. All of the students in the program are housed within the historical city center of Florence, but we are spread throughout the area. Ilya and I were very pleasantly surprised with our accommodations in a much larger, quieter, more beautiful, and more private apartment than we had expected! Additional benefits of our apartment include no roommates (yay!), our own clothes washer (yay!), and the lovely ability to hear church bells every hour. Downsides that we are hoping they will be able to fix soon - two twin beds and our internet does not work (boo!). The latter explains our tardy blog post and limited email correspondence; we are currently writing from a bar ("bars" here serve meals, coffee, etc., more like a cafe at home, but they also happen to serve alcohol). After we got settled in our apartment, we met the rest of the group for a scheduled walking tour to orient us with the city. As we were told, Florence is indeed a "walking city" - streets are very narrow and congested, public transportation is limited (buses) and not highly utilized, and you can walk from one side of the historical district to the other in approximately 30 minutes. On Tuesday evening, we had a welcome dinner with the study abroad group at a restaurant called Il Teatro.

On Wednesday, May 25th, we stopped in a bar (again, think more of an American cafe) for quick pastries and tea (it's cheaper if you eat standing up than if you sit at a table) before a guided Bargello museum tour with the study abroad group. The tour guide was the same woman who gave us the walking tour and who will be guiding us on the Rome weekend - she is a very lively and hilarious German woman named Angela. We had our first history class with American River College Professor Bill Wrightson on Wednesday afternoon (Ilya has taken two classes with Bill previously at ARC). We did more exploring on this day, but at this point, it's become somewhat of a blur! With the internet access difficulty and the busy itinerary for the first week, we're catching up on the highlights of each day to date. That night, we had dinner at Palle D'Or, right around the corner from our apartment. We enjoyed talking with the server and comparing Italian serving jobs with American serving jobs. When the server found out that Ilya is also a server at home, and that we are on our "luna di miele" (honeymoon), he poured us free "digestives" - strong, licorice-tasting liqueur that we were not particularly fond of, but that supposedly aids in digestion.

On the morning of Thursday, May 26th, we were shown the location of our basic language classes, which were to begin the next day. With time to spare before our next class, we went with some classmates to "Love Life," a juice shop similar to Jamba Juice, but they only use fresh fruit and juices. We then had a tour of four classmates' apartment, which is located much closer to the school than we are. After history class that afternoon, we walked across the river with our professor, Bill, and a classmate, Thea, to partake in the (prepare yourself...) FLORENCE GELATO FESTIVAL! Yes, that's right, we arrived just in time for the gelato festival. Many tents were assembled featuring gelato from all over Italy. We each bought a card for seven Euro that is good for five full-sized gelato "tastes" that can be spread out through the four-day, two-location festival. We enjoyed several tastes and tried one of the several gelato cocktails that were also being sold at the festival. The weather had been unseasonably hot and humid since the day we arrived (great timing for the gelato festival, but not so much for the weather!), so after the gelato, it became our mission to find an air conditioned place to get cold beer (Ilya and Bill) and ice water (Rebecca and Thea) - air conditioning is rare in Florence! Once we had recovered enough to face the heat again, Ilya and I returned to the apartment for a siesta. We met Bill and Thea for dinner at Casalinga, the most highly recommended restaurant on our meal voucher plan. Dinner was delicious, but it is hard for me to get used to the heavy, large-portioned lunches and dinners served here (not too hard for Ilya to adapt, as you can imagine!).

On Friday, May 27th, we had our first language class in the morning. We are in the smaller of the two language classes because we have previous Italian experience. After the language class, we had our history class. Following class, we had lunch at restaurant called Ighi Bellini - Ilya had to try the Dante pizza that had been highly recommended by Bill and one of our classmates. Bill refers to the Dante pizza as the "Circle of Life Pizza" because it has truffles and wild boar as the primary toppings. Bill joked that once the wild boar is used to find the truffles, you say, "thank you," and eat them both! It doesn't seem fair to me, but Ilya said it was delicious. I enjoyed my ravioli with pear and creamy Gorgonzola sauce. Following a quick stop by the gelato festival's second location, we returned home. I have been feeling under the weather (horrible allergies for the first couple of days, and just when I got allergy medicine, I realized that I had come down with a chest and sinus cold!) - the craziness, extensive travels, and lack of sleep over the last few weeks (not to mention extensive walking in the heat) seems to have taken a toll on my immune system. So, relieved that we finally had a free weekend ahead of us, we returned to the apartment and slept for 16 hours!

Today has been relatively uneventful so far. We had a nice breakfast at an inexpensive place we found near the apartment, then stopped at a large market that is a block from the apartment. We will be spending more time at the market over the next few weeks - the inside is like a huge farmers' market with produce, cheese, groceries, meats, fish, bread, wine, etc, etc, etc., and there are many goods and tourist items sold at carts outside. Fortunately, the weather has cooled down significantly today and we are comfortable in jeans! We stopped at the apartment to drop off some items from the market and then set out to find lunch and an internet connection. And here we are -  after much typing on my part and much reading on yours, we are caught up to the present moment! Our plans for the rest of the day include using the last of our gelato tastes at the gelato festival, which ends today, and possibly checking out the Boboli Gardens before we meet a classmate for dinner around 7:00.

We will continue to update you when we can. If the internet issue at our apartment is resolved in the near future, it will be much easier to update you regularly! We also look forward to having a home internet connection to Skype soon and "show you" around our apartment! Take care and until next time,
Rebecca and Ilya

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