A lazy sunday

Yesterday we woke up late and tried to give the Uffizi a shot.  We didn't book our tickets in advance, but since it was raining we couldn't really do any sightseeing.  The museum was gigantic, and it didn't help that we decided not to do a tour.  I ended up googling from my blackberry the most famous paintings and their locations in the museum.

I actually enjoyed the views of the city from the museum almost more than the artwork itself.  The views were also the only thing we were allowed to take pictures of.

Today is the first day of classes and luckily I only have one communications class at 12 on Monday's.

Since all of the roommates are now here we have been trying to figure out our traveling plans, however Florence is somewhat difficult to leave on a budget since the airport is small.  We have to go talk to our advisors about the train system because it is difficult to understand, and hopefully they can find us good deals.

view across the arno river from the Uffizi

again

NYU's Florence campus across the river

Ponte Vecchio from the Uffizi

Last night ended up being a lot of fun.  We walked to the reception which felt like forever to get to.  It was a sketchy walk so we got to see the bad parts of firenze. We all also decided to wear heels out like the Italian women do and because of that we could barely walk today. So many people showed up at the reception that we decided to get dinner somewhere since we couldn't move inside the reception.

After dinner we went to a bar crawl put on by the local bars surrounding the duomo.  It was a lot of fun and very americanized, except drinks are a lot more expensive than wine.  We got to meet some really cool people and found out that italians love kareoke even more than Americans do.

This afternoon my 4th roomate arrived from America because she was taking the MCATs back home.  We all went out for gelato for the first time and it was just as good as expected.

I went to billa (our grocery store) this afternoon and felt like a real Italian because i signed up for the savings card.  We cooked our first meal in florence tonight, spaghetti, and played Dean Martin while we cooked.

After that we walked over to ponte vecchio again.  Tiff and I keep joking about how we never like to walk anywhere at home but we literally walk all day here.

Tomorrow were gonna hit all the museums in Firenze.

Un Giorno di Spese

We only had one orientation activity today so we were able to have a full day of shopping.  We crossed the ponte vecchio and got stuck in a crowd of a thousand aisan tourists for about 15 minutes. Once free, we went to all of the saldi's going on in all the different shoe stores.  I bought a favoloso pair of boots and tiff got new leather gloves.

We ate lunch on the other side of the bridge at an overpriced outdoor cafe.  Once back on our side of Florence we went to the leather market and a bunch more shoe stores.  It is extremely crowded right now because all of the big saldi's end this Monday. I found the gucci and valentino stores but have yet to find ferragamo.

We are picking up the area much faster than I expected.  Florence is actually a pretty small city and it takes no longer than 25 minutes to get somewhere.  We definitely lucked out on our location too, it is in the middle of everything.  

We also booked one of the trips today with our school.  We are going to go to Venice from February 26-28 which is the weekend of their famous carnival.  Everyone buys extravagant masks and wigs and wears them around the city.  They explained it as a classy mardi gras.

Topher would fit right in here because toy poodles are by far the most popular breed of dog in florence.  All of the dogs here wear vests, even the huge ones.

Tonight is our welcome dinner for all abroad student programs within Florence so there should be a ton of people there.  We are planning to go to one of the disco's afterword so it should be fun!

our apartment building

were on the 2nd floor

view from our window

having a morning latte at caffe michealangelo

ponte vecchio

 apartments over the arno river

We woke up at 2pm today I think due to all of the jet lag and constant walking the last few days.  My roomate's luggage was finally found and we carried that all the way back to our apartment.

Then Tiffany and I decided to go a few streets over where there was a lot of shopping because of all the sales or "saldi" going on.  Other students told us that January is the best month of sales, but I assume there are still sales every month.  We ended up not buying any shoes and just window shopping.

We went into one of their big supermarket brands "billa" and bought shampoo, conditioner, soap, and other household products. What sucked is that you have to pay for the plastic bags you use so we'll have to start bringing our own.

We went out to dinner at what our landlord said is the best pizza place and then hung out at the lion's tavern fountain afterwords. I learned that the italian liquor sambuca is more of a northern liquor and that lemonchello is a southern liquor. The lion's tavern is a very americanized bar, it is also where is saw the signed clemson tee shirt hanging from the ceiling.

Tomorrow we have some residency orientations to do and then we are going to "maybe" check out the gym and then explore a little more.

buonanotte!

Secondo Giorno in Italia

Today was a full day of orientations where we got the low down on our apartments and classes.  We learned a lot of general information about apartment upkeep and going to our classes.  In Italy, people air out their apartments a couple times of day so mold doesn't grow.  We did this which made our apartment even colder.  For the first time in my life I am always cold here.

A representative from the US consulate came and talked to us about saftey and told us if we ever feel home sick we can go to their office to stare at the american flag waving over the Arno river.

We had a welcoming dinner tonight in a really beautiful building with a full course meal and champagne.  We shopped a little on the walk home and have realized that fur jackets are a necessity here.  All the women wear fabulous fur coats at night. Hint, dad.

The italian men are funny because whenever we walk by them they say "What's Up" in heavy accents, trying to act like americans.  We've learned that you can say "bello" in about every sentence which means cool.

Were about to walk to the ponte vecchio and see it at night.  We really want to explore a lot of Firenze before classes start.

We also walked by the rich area of florence and i found where i'll buy my summer house when I'm a millionaire.

Arriving in Florence

I finally arrived in Florence around 10 am after a long day of traveling.  We flew from Dulles to Paris to Florence.  The flight to Florence was awesome because we went over both the swiss and Italian alps.

I was very happy to land without any lost luggage.  We went to the school to check in with the program.  There we received cell phones for calls within Italy.  I believe I received a nokia from 1975.

I didn't get to see much of the city today since we were so busy with checking in and getting our documents together.  Were about to go out to our first dinner in Florence, and are patiently waiting til the acceptable time to not seem like complete tourists.  I'm going to have my first glass of real Italian wine and then take a long snooze until orientation tomorrow morning.