Saturday morning we took a bus into Firenze for a walking tour with the all-knowing Professoressa Mariotti. We started at the top of a hill where there was a church and a beautiful view of the city. We then walked down by the Arno (the river) and saw Ponte Vecchio. Ponte Vecchio is a bridge on the Arno that has shops on it, like most bridges did in the old days. I've been told butchers used to own most of the shops on the bridge, but now the shops are taken up by high-end jewelers. We also saw Ponte Santa Trìnita, a bridge that was destroyed 1944 by the Germans...but the Italians found every stone in the bottom of the Arno and rebuilt it with all of the original stones! We also saw some Medici palaces, the Duomo (Cathedral), some markets and other important sites. The tour ended at Santa Maria Novella, which is a church with the Santa Maria Novella train station right next to it. We were then given a bus pass and told to find the 2 or 28 bus and take it home!
A group of 7 of us went to find Florence maps at a tourist place then set off to explore the city. We also weren't getting any food at the villa that day so had to buy our meals. We found the market which has all the stands set up outside with purses and clothes, and inside a big building is the food market. There also happens to be some restaurants and we picked one to eat at. I had some tortellini with meat sauce and it was pretty good.
After lunch it was siesta time. Everyone in Italy takes a siesta. For three hours in the afternoon, life shuts down. completely. We walked around for a while and decided we deserved a siesta. We found a little park and sat down and chilled. Two of the people I was with were my roommate Amanda and a University of Michigan architecture grad. student, Micah. Micah happened to be telling Amanda how much he dislikes the pigeons that are everywhere. Amanda replied by saying you just have to tell the pigeons who's boss and they will respect you. Seconds after this exchange, a pigeon pooped on Micah's back. It was hilarious!
After siesta, many of us thought a bathroom break was needed. But, in true European fashion, bathroom use cost 50 cents. (I should have prefaced this story by saying at orientation we received a museum pass to get us into 8 Firenze museums for free--and we get to skip any lines!) Anyway, I suggested we use what I called out "bathroom passes". I decided we might as well milk those museum cards for all their worth and use them as bathroom passes too! So, let me tell you, the bathrooms in the basement of the world-renowned Uffizi gallery are something else! I will be using that bathroom pass--I mean museum pass--many times this semester! (However, we did end up sticking around for an hour and a half checking out the Uffizi--lots of art!)
After the Uffizi we took another siesta on the steps of the gallery. We just sat and watched the masses of tourists. There was also a pretty funny mime we watched for a while. We wanted to get supper so we got up and tried to find a place. We were near the Duomo--Cathedral if you didn't remember--and everything around there is over-priced and quite touristy. We walked further and found some side streets and eventually stumbled upon a pizzeria and bar type place. Andrew, a guy from Duke that was with us, and I ordered the same kind of pizza; I think it was onion and sausage. We both thought it was pretty good! Everyone else wasn't too impressed. It was also pretty cheap!
After supper we made our way back to Santa Maria Novella and hopped on a bus that took us back to Sesto. There was a group of 6 girls and 3 guys that were going to go check out the nightlife in Florence later on that night. We headed into town on the bus (getting on in the wrong spot adding 15 minutes to our ride--but that's alright) and went to a place called the Mayflower. It was suggested in someone's guide book that it wasn't too touristy. The book was right! There were no tourists...or locals! It was pretty dead, but we had a drink then went to find a club. It turns out the clubs are filled mostly with American study abroad students and creepy Italian men. But we found a cute place with rap-type music in the front and another dance floor in the back with...DISCO MUSIC! We disco-ed it up for quite a while...We weren't going to fit into one cab so four of us left a little earlier than the rest. We got home and went to bed...that was quite a first Saturday in Firenze!
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