Part 2: Firenze

I left Nice on Saturday morning and spent most of the day on the train to Florence. I intended to take advantage of that time to study for my midterms and work on a few papers that I have coming up...oops. I should have known better. Still, I did get a little work done, and I decided not to feel guilty about not being more productive because I was on vacation.

My trip to Florence required me to take a local train from Nice to Milan, then a high-speed train from Milan to Florence. Despite leaving myself plenty of time to make the connection, my first train got to Milan nearly an hour late, meaning that I missed my second train by just a few minutes. I was pretty frustrated and more than a little overwhelmed by the busy Milan train station. I think I understimated how shocking it would be to arrive in a country where I don't speak the language -- my first instinct was to speak in French, even though I knew it was the wrong language. Still, after taking a few minutes to breathe and get my bearings, I managed to find the next train to Florence and hopped on without any problems.

K, my friend from Georgetown who has been studying in Florence all year, met me at the station and helped me find my hostel. After a delicious pasta dinner (I had ravioli stuffed with cheese and asparagus), I was completely wiped out and crashed into bed. The next day, Sunday, was Easter. K and I attended the Scoppio del Carro -- a Florentine tradition dating back to the Crusades where a cart is wheeled through the city to the Duomo, the main church. The priest celebrating Easter mass lights a spark during the "Gloria in excelsis Deo" that travels down a fuse to the cart, setting off the fireworks within. It's sort of hard to describe, but it was pretty amazing.

We wandered around the city in the afternoon, soaking in the sunshine and of course stopping for gelato (Gelato #2). K's host family very kindly invited me to dinner that evening, and it was pretty cool to watch an Italian family "in action." It's definitely a different dynamic from my French host family -- more laid-back, I think, and the relationship between parents and children doesn't seem quite as rigid. And of course, the food was delicious!

On Monday morning, K and I visited the Palazzo Vecchio, a former residence of the Medici family that now serves as the town hall. The palazzo itself was beautiful...but I was most excited to see Machiavelli's office! In the afternoon, I visited the Uffizi Gallery (thank you, Rick Steves, for suggesting that I reserve my ticket in advance -- the lines were pretty crazy). I had been there before during my high school orchestra's trip to Italy. However, our visit coincided with the afternoon that everyone came down with a nasty virus, so I definitely did not appreciate it fully the first time around. In fact, I don't even remember seeing Boticelli's Birth of Venus, one of my favorite Renaissance-era paintings. I'm very glad I went back because now I have much more vivid memories!

B, my friend from middle school who visited me in Paris, met me outside the gallery (I believe we went for Gelato #3 at this point), and I stayed with her at her apartment for the rest of my visit. On Tuesday morning, we went to the Bargello museum, and B gave me a guided tour of the sculptures she's been studying in her art history class this semester. In the afternoon, while she was in class, I went to the Palazzo Pitti, essentially the Florentine version of Versailles, and relaxed in the Boboli Gardens -- sort of like my own Jardin du Luxembourg, only in Italy, you're allowed to sit on the grass!

On Wednesday morning, we went to an outdoor market and picked up the most delicious strawberries and blood-red oranges. I intended to go to Pisa that afternoon, but unfortunately I encountered my second Italian train dilemma. I still maintain that the announcement made over the intercom (in English, no less) said that the train to Pisa was leaving from track 18...however, that was most certainly not the case. I ended up in a little town called Rufina about half an hour outside of Florence. After determining that there was nothing of touristic interest to be found there, I had to wait an hour to catch the next train back to Florence. By this point, it was too late in the afternoon to try to make it to Pisa, so I decided to cut my losses and went to the Santa Croce Church instead.

It ended up being perhaps my favorite afternoon in Florence. The church was really interesting -- Dante, Michelangelo, and Machiavelli are buried there, among others -- and after I had my fill, I found a spot on the piazza in front of it to people-watch while enjoying gelato (Gelato #4 and my favorite combination: dark chocolate and strawberry cheesecake) in the sunshine. B, K, and I all met up for "aperitivo" that evening, a brilliant Italian invention in which bars offer a buffet of various hors d'oeuvres during their version of a "happy hour." It is expected that you will buy a drink and then munch your way through the buffet, composed of all sorts of yummy pasta, rice, and vegetable dishes, for dinner.

I may or may not have indulged in Gelato #5 afterward to celebrate my last night in Tuscany... I'll leave it up to you to guess.