Ah, where to begin?! First let me apologize for not posting until now, it has been a crazy first few days in Florence and I haven't had time to really sit and write yet. Warning: this post is going to be long. Enjoy!
My first few days in Florence have been nothing short of amazing. But first I had to get here. Tuesday the 24th, Rachel, Moriah and I boarded our flight at DFW (after some interesting travel developments) and said ciao to America when we connected from Philadelphia to Munich. From there we boarded our study abroad student-filled flight to Florence! I had a window seat on the flight and got a perfect view of the Swiss Alps as we flew over, their beauty is mesmerizing.
After the short flight, we arrived and split a taxi to the city and the Hotel Medici to check into our rooms. The room was SO tiny and the bathroom even tinier (haha)! The shower was literally over the toilet and soaked the WHOLE bathroom. The location of the hotel couldn’t have been better though, it was right by the Duomo! After checking in, our group went to the Accent center across the Fiume Arno to check in there and become official residents of Florence. I instantly fell in love with this city on the walk over. We crossed the Ponte Vecchio and I couldn’t believe I was finally on the bridge that I’ve been staring at on my desktop background for the past 4 months! When Beth from Accent told me congratulations because I officially became a resident of Florence, it hit me. This is now my home.
The first night, Accent took us out for dinner and put us all in a food coma. When we finished the pasta, I was already thinking dessert. But no, they brought us pizza next…and then an array of meat…and then finally dessert. The food was fantastic and I left ready to sleep for the next 36 hours.
There was no time for sleeping, however. We woke up the next day at 8:00am to go to our apartments! Brandon, Robert and I packed into the taxi and took off to our apartment with only an address The coolest fact of the day: our apartment was built in 1604. I’m living in Florence in an apartment from the 17th Century. How cool is that?! We live on Via de' Macci in a very Florentine area of town (so not a very tourist area, all locals basically). And to make things better, we have a huge fresh food market right behind our apartment. The market is all-local and they sell farm fresh produce and meat. We had about an hour for lunch and decided to go check out the market. Inside, we found this little restaurant named Rocco Trattoria. It is named after this adorable Italian bald man, who runs around the place talking to everyone! After eating, I decided to go to the restroom inside the market, only to find out it costs 60 cents (ha!). I sucked it up and paid that time, but won’t make that mistake again.
That night we met Moriah, Rachel, Lyndsey, Kathryn, Sarah and Kacy and went to a place called Il Pizzaiuolo for dinner. This place is literally feet away from our apartment and is a gem of a place. Here, I ordered in Italian for first time! This place has great and rather inexpensive pizza and house wine. After dinner, we explored the city at night. In getting lost, we stumbled upon the Lion’s Fountain, an Irish pub with college shirts hanging up on their ceiling. “Wagon Wheel” was playing when we walked in. A little piece of home.
The girls and our apartment then cooked for the first time at the girls’ place with what we bought at the grocery store. We had wine, bread, spaghetti and presto-cooked chicken. It was SO good, I can’t wait to do this some more!
I only got 3 hours of sleep that night before waking up to catch the early train to Bologna for Lyndsey’s birthday. This was my first train experience and I slept for about 45 minutes of the 1 ½ hour ride haha. When we got to Bologna, we met up with Lyndsey’s friends Simone and Carlotta. They were amazing and took us all around Bologna all day. We saw the two towers, the oldest university in the world, went to two delicious cafés, and ended the day with crepes (my choice: nutella and banana). We also practiced an Italian tradition of pulling Lyndsey’s ears 21 times for her birthday.
The train ride back to Florence was one of my favorite times of the semester abroad so far! Brandon, Robert and I were in the same car and met Flavia and Stephanie, two Italian ladies from Pisa. This was great because we started practicing our Italian with them; we spoke about our families, where we were from, our studies, etc. Then I asked them about American music and movies. Lady Gaga is one of Stephanie’s favorites (“Judas” is her favorite Gaga song)! They gave us some Italian rap and hip-hop to listen to and we are going to buy a CD of one for our boom box in our apartment. When we got off the train, we said an Italian goodbye (the kissing cheek thing) and we're now Facebook friends!
When we got back to Firenze, we decided to go to the Lion's Fountain and pretend we were from England to people we met. I ended up having to initiate the meeting and name us all on the spot (quite hilarious). Needless to say, I wasn't that believable. Eh, whatever!
Hope you enjoyed reading about my first few days in Florence, I'll try to post more often in the future! But for now, Ciao!
