Firenze 2006-2007

Weekend in Florence

This is the time of the week when I usually recount my weekend’s adventures from some corner of Europe, but this weekend I decided to stay at home (kinda) and enjoy Florence while taking a break and saving some money. There were about fifteen of us who stayed in Florence this weekend as we have midterms coming up before too long.
On Friday, Alex, Conner, and I got up and ate breakfast at Café Liberta, then borrowed bikes and headed South through Florence. We turned East after crossing the Arno and headed to the suburb of Florence, Bagni A Ripoli. From there, we turned South again, heading in the general direction of Greve, about twenty miles outside Florence on the way to Siena. We made it to San Donato, then headed to the next town on the way, Grassina. On the way to Grassina, Alex took a turn too fast and ended up bending the back wheel. His bike was still rideable, well kinda. The back wheel was wobbly and hard to ride, and constantly getting worse, so we decided to head back to Florence. We kinda got lost on the way back, so it took about twice as long as it should have. We left the Villa at 11am, and got back at like 5pm, after six hours of constantly riding. At our best estimate, we rode about 15 miles.
(A view of Florence from about 6 miles out, that's the Duomo was off in the distance)
(Me on my hot pink, girl's bike that I rode all weekend)
Our original plan was to camp out in Greve, and we still wanted to camp out, so we got a baguette, meat, and cheese for dinner and headed to Fiesole. We headed out to the hiking trails just outside the city. Off these trails, there are several caves, viewpoints, and a historical marker for Leonardo da Vinci because it was on this mountain where he tried out his flying machine. We hiked a ways, then found a viewpoint, ate our dinner, and then continued down the trail in search for a spot to camp. We found one a short ways away and made camp for the night. We got to bed fairly early, and all woke up around 1am, freezing. We weren’t really prepared to spend a cold night out with no other shelter but our sleeping bags, so we headed back into town and thankfully there was a bus that was headed back to Florence. We ended up sleeping in our nice warm beds in the villa.
(Me and Alex on the way back from Fiesole)
(Conner with his bike on our trip)
(Alex and his bike on the trip)
I got up fairly early on Saturday and headed to Café Liberta. From there, I came back home and spent a good two hours of so in the library working on Italian and Humanities. After that, I watched the rest of Enrico IV, my Italian film for the week. I went out for a kebab for lunch, came back to watch National Treasure, and then went with Alex to play soccer with Leonardo, our Humanities professor at the Parco Cascine. We rode bikes there, and looked over what we thought was the whole park and couldn’t find them so we headed back home content with the bike ride but slightly disappointed that we didn’t get to play soccer. For dinner on Saturday night, the Willis’ made up breakfast for supper. They made pancakes, french toast, bacon, and eggs for the fifteen or so of us around. We all ate our fill of American style breakfast foods that we were beginning to miss before watching part of A Mad, Mad, Mad World. Then me, Alex, Katie, Jess, and Daniel Willis (who was visiting for the weekend) went out. We ended up at a bar, and then at 1am we went to the pasticieria that we found several weeks before. Near Piazza Santa Croce, there is this bakery that makes pastries all through the night for bakeries across Florence to be delivered fresh in the morning. Well, turns out they sell some to the public themselves, and we happened to find it one night and have been back for warm, fresh pastries several times since. After that, we headed home and to bed.
Sunday was similar to Saturday. Café Liberta for breakfast fairly early, several hours in the library, a simple lunch, etc. The only real difference was that I went to the train station to get tickets to Paris, going the 9th to the 11th of November. Apart from that, Sunday was full of work, welcoming people back, then worship, and finally a long run which was greatly needed.
Today, it’s back to the weekly routine of classes, etc. This week is just a bit different cause we have midterms this week. Wednesday is my first- in Italian.
Sorry I don't have more pictures, but those were pretty much the only ones I took this weekend.

posted by Daniel Williams @ 01:24