31-8-2008
I arrived to Florence after a 10 hour flight from San Francisco to Germany then another 1 hour flight from Germany to Florence. I got to my apartment at about 2:30 p.m. (5:30 p.m. in California) My apartment opens up to two doors, one on the left and one on the right. I live in the room on the left. As you enter the front door to the apartment and go through the door on the left you enter our living room. To the left is a bathroom and a single room where my roommate, Pepe lives. He is from Cal Poly as well. My room is on the other side of the living room (to the right). I share the room with Nick, who also attends Cal Poly. He is 22 years old and a fifth year in school. After Florence he will be done with school and begin his life in the real world so he convinced his parents to let him go out with a bang. If you go to the door to the right once you enter our apartment there is a kitchen and another room, which is where my final two roommates live, Kyle (from Arizona) and Paul (from New Jersey). Paul has a rich Jersey accent and Kyle was definitely raised in Orange County. I really like my roommates and although we have a cramped apartment it is good because it forces me to be outside, exploring and enjoying the city. My room has two windows with shutters, as I opened my window on that first day I about collapsed to the sight of the Piazza del Duomo! The cathedral is literally about 100 feet from my bedroom window! After we sat around and introduced ourselves upon arrival we made a complementary pasta dinner which was provided by the program which we are studying through, along with some vino, obviously. The clock struck 8 p.m. and I had been up for 27 hours, traveled somewhere around 5,000 miles, and been on a plane for around 12 hours so I dropped. I woke up to my sloppy roommates at midnight coming home drunk from the bars. We all passed out at about 2 a.m.
1-9-2008
I woke up around 6 a.m. and the adrenaline hit me. I went for a morning jog through the center of Florence only to figure out through the blank stares and disgusted Italians that it was beyond the norm for people to workout in the heart of the city. So I decided to go back to my apartment, took a shower, and got ready for orientation at 9. Nick and I went down the street (literally about 50 steps) to a café and sat down for a café latte and pastries. Little did we know that by obeying the café manager to ‘sit down!’ we were increasing our bill! What? Yeah..In Italy, if you sit down to eat you pay more than if you just order, pay, and go. Either way we ended up paying about 5,5 (that is how it is written) euro for the breakfast combined. We arrived at orientation after searching the city for the building about 20-30 minutes late. The orientation lasted forever, until 3 p.m. The one notable part of the orientation was that we were spoken to by the police chief of Florence. Some of the interesting points he made were incredible. For example, it is illegal to eat or drink in front of the Duomo. It is illegal to sit on the walls of the Arno river. Most interestingly, he said that the city of Florence is an open air museum, the entire city is a museum, which I now find to be extremely true. If you disobey any law, no matter what the crime, you are fined 160 euro. This excludes obviously serious crimes. However, I won’t be running near the Duomo any longer. After orientation Nick and I went to the Duomo and decided to climb the dome. There are 3 entrances to the entire cathedral: the baptistery, which is a separate octagonal building, the church itself, or you can climb 462 stairs to the top of the dome! We decided to climb the duomo, through the dark, up the steep stairs. There are three flat levels which you can walk in a circular fashion. The first two are located on the inside of the building before the dome actually begins. Here you can look down at the church or up at the inside of the dome which has Michelangelo’s painting of the Last Judgment. The final circular walk you can do is once you have climbed the 462nd stair, you can go outside to the top of the duomo and look out at the entire city of Firenze! It is the most amazing sight I have ever seen! When we got back to our apartment we took a nap and woke up at 10 for dinner, which we ate just below our apartment. After we decided to cruise the city, and because it was so late there were no tourists so it was beautiful. We walked around for 2-3 hours and came back and went to bed.
2-9-2008
We got up at 7 a.m. because we could no longer sleep and Nick and I decided to get breakfast. We went a little further that yesterday (about 70-80 steps) this time. We again, the tourists we are, sat down to eat. However this time the bill was a whopping 12 euro! Goes to show you that the cafes and restaurants here will charge you for everything and if you look like a tourist you will get robbed! We again had an orientation until 1 p.m. At 2:30 we were given a guided tour by one of the young ladies in charge of the program of central Firenze. Our school is inside a building which is built around the Piazza della Republica, which is where the Romans first built the ancient city of Firenze (Florence). It is the center of Firenze. The main streets cross through the square; one street runs north-south and the other hinges on the east-west axis of the sun. As you expand from the Piazza della Republica the surrounding streets form a grid. We went to the Piazza del Duomo (“Cathedral Square”) and I was informed that in 1330, a man by the name of Andrea Pisano was chosen to build the bronze doors which lead from the battistero (baptistery) into the church. This was a very big deal, and I am proud to have the root Pisano in my last name! The doors were on the east side of the battistero, but today they face the Arno river (south), because in 1401 Filippo Brunelleschi and Ghiberti were asked to build another set of doors. The final set of doors were built by Ghiberti, and they are made of gold, they are called the ‘Gates of Paradise’ as Michelangelo called them. We then we to see the Statue of David, which was constructed by Michelangelo, and it is just before David defeated Goliath, as he is holding the sling over his left shoulder and rock in his right hand. Later, we went to some of the girl’s apartment and made dinner in order to save money and had some vino. We went out to the Ponte Vecchio which is the most famous bridge in Italy. It is so important and historically significant that Hitler decided to bomb all other bridges upon the Arno river except the Ponte Vecchio! However he did bomb the sides of it so nobody could cross. Roman leaders used to cross over the Ponte Vecchio to safety in the hills of Tuscany (which is the general region which Firenze lies; similar to an American county). However they would escape through an elevated hall which lies over the bridge, which you can see in pictures. Anyway, we sat there for a while with about 300 other people and listened to two man play guitar and sing. Finally we got gelato and retired around 12:30 p.m.
3-9-2008
Today is the first day I have actually felt like myself, no more jet lag! I got a solid seven hours of sleep and have felt great all day. I got up at 8 a.m. and went searching for a supermarket because I had been getting robbed by the cafes/sandwich shops/restaurants. Thank god I found a market that has great prices. I got some essentials: bread, prosciutto meat, cheese, pasta, lettuce. (mom and Dad if you read this, the store is REALLLY expensive you should shoot me some more money J) Next I went to class, which is less than a five minute walk from our house. A lot of the stores in Firenze sell gelato, if you have been here you know what I mean, there are gelato stands at every other store. In my class, Italian Renaissance Architecture there are 5 students, me four girls and the teacher. Supposedly, the main thing we do in the class is walk around the city and the teacher lectures us on whatever statue or historical area we are looking at. After class I came back to the apartment and did a little in-house workout which felt great since I hadn’t worked out since last Tuesday. I went to my ‘Italy in the Words of British and American Writers’ class at 3 p.m. There are 4 students in this class, three of us live together. I am now back at my apartment and just made some pasta and am enjoying the first chance to actually sit back, relax, and take it all in. Gotta love the smell of Firenze…as cigarette smoke fills my room; smoking seems to be a tad bit more common than in California.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
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