Advertisement
My stay in Florence did not start in the best of ways. I arrived all excited to be settling into two months of living the high life in gorgeous Florence only to find myself homeless! I've never been homeless before and the stress of being stranded in a foreign country, where the only person I knew had just up and left to England for the week, was not a great experience. Luckily after 24 hrs of frantically trying to get a hold of someone and in the end deciding that if worst came to worst i'd live in my uni building, I got a hold of my housemate. From there it's been smooth sailing. I'm living in a lovely large apartment about 10 min walk from the central station. I have to admit that i haven't seen all that much of Florence yet, but what i have seen is gorgeous. The day after the crappy homeless day was a lovely day to go for a wander and acquaint myself with my new home town. As it turns out it is a very small town, with very old very narrow streets, and a helluva lot of tourists (I arrived just before May
day weekend, not a great move). I had a good look at the outside of all the important buildings, as you can see from the photos. From the outside they look impressive. From the inside, i hope even more so, but we'll have to wait and see for that one. What particularly struck me was that wandering around these little streets with very old, very high and very skinny houses on either sides (back in the day, there wasn't enough room to build out, so they built up and up and up) you have little idea of where exactly you are, until you round a corner and in front of you is some huge magnificient architectural wonder. The Duomo in particular made this impression on me. That weekend I dragged my poor housemates to a day of culture at the Pitti Palace, which in itself is quite an unattractive massive fortress like building, but inside houses some great museums and behind it is the beautiful Boboli gardens. It was a gorgeous day to get lost in the gardens, which we did, trying to find an elusive grotto (which we later found, behind the fence, on the opposite side of the
pretend David
i'm still mentally preparing myself to tackle for the 3 hr line to see the real onegarden, after we had exited.... massive frustration there). That night we went to experience some true Italian way of life. There was a massive music festival on that weekend, and we found a huge warehouse in which djs had been set up. Pretty cool experience. And sorry kids, none of that really bad wog techers we're all used to - proper house, probably a lot more up to date than in Australia. The next day was recovery day, no one even left the house... Although we tried to, to get some food, but everything was closed... Except for the best gelati place in all of Florence... Now that's a dinner I've found myself having way too often and enjoying way too much. That's been pretty much it for Florence so far, the rest of the time has mainly been spent trying to get into the study mode, with classes starting :o(
Advertisement
Tot: 0.135s; Tpl: 0.019s; cc: 8; qc: 51; dbt: 0.0981s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
