Saturday, January 27, 2007
Buongiorno, all! Because facebook is awful, and because my e-mail will not allow me to send photos over two megabytes, I bring you this fantastic photojournal of my time in Florence, Italy! I am now at my two week mark in Italy and have just finished (or rather, bumbled through) my first week of classes. Here are the highlights:
We, the brave and fearless NYU students who are studying in Italy this semester, first converged in JFK international airport on January 16, 2007. Well, about 40 of us did.
All was going well, except the strange man we sat next to for seven hours on the airplane, until we hit our layover in Milan... and found out there was no flight to Florence due to an all-encompassing fog.... We spent hours fruilessly speaking English with many clueless Alitalia Airline personnel, because NYU's phone system decided that was the day it needed to be non-functional. We finally discovered that there was a bus... maybe... and 12 hours later we finally arrived at our Florence campus, rather disgruntled. NYU strikes again!
But all was soothed the next morning when we saw THIS! Our CAMPUS! Oh my goodness. This is the property of the "Villa la Pietra" - and Italian National treasure and our gorgeous, gorgeous base of NYU operations here in Florence. There are actually 5 villas on the property, and the one in this picture is Villa Ulivi, where we have our classes. Check out that Florentine fog.
Here is the aforementioned Villa la Pietra, which was built in the 14th century and is now a museum (where I am trying to get a job as a tour guide.)
That is Villa Natalia, where the freshman live. Lucky bastards.
Villa Natalia: long shot:
Up close and personal with Villa Ulivi (where the classrooms are):
Campus path with Dr. Suess trees flanking olive tree grove:
And our olive tree grove happens to actually be a working orchard that makes lots of olive oil every year!
After our two-day whirlwind orientation, we met our lovely PA (peer assistant, standing) and our fellow "suite-ies." My roomie, the lovely Miss Chu, continues to hold the esteemed position of Kate's roomie here in Italy, as well.
We then took a gander at our also amazing apartment. The living room:
The kitchen:
One of four bathrooms:
And finally, our room. Seeing that we sorely needed to redecorate...
...we sought out something familiar... (the only remotely familiar thing here, in fact)
And transformed our room from this:
to this:
To much HGTV for me. Also, the walls here are made of something different than we are used to and we are forbidden to tape/tack/adhere in any way anything to the walls or we will be severely flogged. So alas, out new "waterfall" of curtains is our only vertical decor, although it's kind of modern and classy looking.
Also, the drinking age here is 16, so the first thing I ran out and bought was this:
We then set out to see a few nearby sights of the city, mainly, the Duomo di Firenze - a huge cathedral. It's the largest and most well known landmark of Florence, famous for it's pioneering architecture and beautiful craftsmanship.
The Piazza San Marco - another church. (There are many. Florence is very Catholic.)
Hey NYU-ers - our arch is bigger than ya'll's arch. (the Piazza de Liberta.)
The walk to school (up a giant hill, both ways, for 30 minutes in the freezing cold... Well it's not uphill both ways but the first giant hill is more like a mountainside so it should count twice.) also includes some amazing examples of florentine architecture:
an abandoned greenhouse
with a decaying, creepy old fountain inside
a beautiful garden nearby.
My suite-ies and I hopped on a Big Red Bus, courtesy of NYU (and our 50K tuition)...
...And went cruisin' down the strip... (or the Arno River, as the waterfront is called here)
And yes I know I'm a film major and these are lousy shots but I was on a moving bus.
And as many gorgeous, elaborate, luxurious buildings as this place has, they also have this medieval legacy:
Oi. That is the old mint where they would make coins way back when. Can you imagine working in that? You're office would have had a riverside view, true, but how can you see it if there are only five windows?!?
But then the bus drove us up to the ridge on the south side of town, to see the entire valley:
The dominating duomo
The church steeples are the only thing that pierce the skyline. There used to be many medieval towers atop rich people houses, but they made everyone lop those off to a uniform height a few hundred years ago to let the light in, but also really to make sure the tallest part of the city remained the catholic churches that are littered everywhere. I admit they are beautiful.
And that's all for the photos, for now. A few other notes on Florence: EVERYTHING here is different, even from the rest of Europe it seems. There are no Walgreens-type stores, no Office Depot equivalents, no Wal-mart wannabes or anything convenient, whatsoever. (Except the IKEA. But it doesn't have socks or school binders.) Everything is purposefully inconvenient, it seems. And to compensate, everyone here takes a two hour lunch break where the go home, eat, and –– no joke –– take a NAP. Now, this rule applies to restaurants, too, so while everyone is on their lunch break, all the restaurants are closed. THEN at around 5, everyone takes a two hour DINNER BREAK, and then they come back to work from 7 to 9. WTF?!? Again, this applies to restaurants, so while you are starving because you missed lunch because the restaurants are lazy, you can't get food - again. So people just go to restaurants to look cool - they go home to actually eat. Now, on the rare occasion that you can get into a restaurant, it's utterly amazing food, all the time. And every meal comes with wine. I have learned another booze-related fact from the Italians; drinking rum (or any alcohol) will completely sooth your sore throat. Aside from the ample supply of wine, I'm become ravingly patriotic since I got here. I've never missed peanut butter, bologna, cheddar cheese, and yellow mustard so much in my life. And Wal-Mart. Sorry Megrez, lol. More photos to come weekly!
Best Wishes to you all, and thank you for reading my giant post!
-Kate
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