So another week of classes has come and gone. It was pretty good. I’ve really particularly started to like my European Society class and professor. I find all the historical and political interactions in Europe interesting and I really like the way the professor runs class. Before we start our lecture we discuss things that have come up in the news recently. (Each of us is assigned a different newspaper from all over Europe.) This has been really helpful as far as getting to know the current state of everything and then our lectures help to flesh out the background.
So other notable events this week: We had a big group cook out this week that Helen arranged for us. At some point (I think Tuesday) we all met for dinner at the normal time, but instead of going to the normal dining room, we all took the tables outside and lined them up on the lawn in one giant long table. Then we ate a really good dinner as the sun set behind the Villa.
It was a very nice and scenic way to do dinner. We started off with a course that was like tomato soup mixed with bread to get a semi spongy type tomato soup that was very good. Then for the main course we had some white beans, green beans, and a seasoned grilled chicken leg. The villa even provided us with free wine. Finally, for desert we had these grilled bananas that had been infused with chocolate. It was a really fun dinner and we sat out there for about 2 hours chatting and relaxing. It was definitely neat that we could do that in the middle of the week.
Then on Thursday we headed into the city to meet up for art history class at the Palazzo Vecchio in the Piazza della Signoria by the fake David. I left my room an hour early and ended up on a bus with about 8 others heading to class. The busses however were very crowded and slow that day and it took us almost an hour to get to Florence. Once we arrived we were already late so we quickly walked to the piazza.
When we arrived we sneakily ducked into the already congregated group as if nothing ever happened. As it turns out almost everyone was late due to awful transport that day, so we only missed a couple minutes of it. We toured the inside of the palace which had some really nicely painted walls and ceilings. One room that stands out had a scenic representation of each of the four elements on 3 of the walls and the ceiling. It also had Olympian gods painted into the scenes. We also saw a statue of a woman (I forget her name) chopping someone’s head off. The tour was overall pretty cool, but since we were all spread out it was difficult to hear our teacher.
After lunch a group of ten including myself went out to lunch at Hard Rock Café. At this point we’d been in Italy for two weeks and we were starting to really crave good burgers. So we caved and found the Hard Rock Café where we all grossly over paid for burgers, fries, and milkshakes. It was almost 20 Euro, but worth every cent.
The next day I headed into Florence around 6 to meet up with Al, who had just arrived in Florence after seeing Germany and Prague on her opening tour. We met by the Duomo. Then we walked around the city a bit. I tried to help her get her bearings and then we grabbed dinner. We chatted for a bit about her tour and our traveling plans and then began to walk back toward the Duomo. On the way we stopped and rode a carousel because it was there. Then we tried to find gelato and ended up finding the same place that I went with my family last time we were in Florence, Festival del Gelato.
They have soooooo many flavors there. I tried rose flavored gelato and surprisingly it just tasted like a rose, which was weird. Then I walked Al back to where she is staying and headed home on the bus.
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