Firenze 2006-2007

Second Weekend in Florence

This weekend was my second to stay at home in Florence. Pretty much everyone in the house decided to stay in this weekend as it was the weekend before our long weekend for Thanksgiving, and as we had our Humanities term paper due on Monday.
The weekend started on Thursday night when 15 of us went out to dinner at Aqua al Due for Liz’s birthday. It was a good restaurant near the Bargello. Pretty much everyone had the assigi di prima, which was a sampler of five different pastas, each of which was amazing.
I woke up early on Friday morning and went to Café Liberta, ate and then headed back to the library. After several hours of work, I was done with the paper, so I went back to the room and was showered before my roommates got up. I took a short nap because I really did wake up too early, and when I got up, I went out to get lunch with Alex and West. We got Kebabs and then went to the train station to try and get Interrail passes- Eurail passes for Europeans. We failed in the endeavor, so Alex and West got Eurail passes, and then we headed back to the villa. I went for a run around Florence that afternoon and then came back to the villa to relax a bit before going out to dinner. About 15 of us went to Pizzeria Spera and got pizza to go, and we came back to the villa and watched Euro Trip on the wall in one of our classrooms after we turned the floor into one big pillow bed. After that we went out with some people from London who were in town visiting for the weekend.
I got up early again on Saturday, went to Café Liberta, and then headed to the train station to meet Fernando, another Londoner who was in Rome, but decided to come up and visit Florence for the day. I met him at the station, and took him home, going by several tourist sites. When we got back to the house, we woke up Alex and West and while they got ready, I gave Nando the tour of the villa. When everyone was ready, we headed off to the Leather Market to look around a bit on our way to the Uffizi. We finally made it to the Uffizi and started on the tour of the enormous museum. We saw all of the most famous works that it holds, including many by Botticelli, Giotto, Cimabue, Michelangelo, and others. The thing that made this trip to the Uffizi better than the other times that I’ve been was the fact that there was a special exhibit on Leonardo that featured some of his works that I’d never seen as well as a kind of insight into his thoughts and an explanation of his inventions. It was really neat, and after we spent a good several hours in the museum, we headed out and in the direction of Santa Croce. We stopped by a supermarket to get stuff for lunch, intending on having a picnic in the piazza, but it started to pour rain so we headed to the Ponte Vecchio as there is some cover there. We ate our picnic as it continued to pour. As most of the stuff we wanted to show Fernando involved walking we decided to head back home and relax for a bit before heading back out agian. We watched another movie on the wall and then went to Pizzeria Spera again as it is the best restaurant in Florence that is halfway cheap. We ate the pizza and then went to get gelato before having to take Fernando back to the station so he could get his train back to Rome.
It rained most of the day on Sunday, so I slept in, just made Café Liberta before it closed and then headed back to the villa to do some work. I worked for quite a while and then ventured out for some lunch and to run some errands. After that, I went on a run, but it started raining pretty hard a little while after I started, so I headed back. Before I knew it, it was dinner time so I ate and heard all about everyone else’s weekend as usual. After dinner, I went to the worship and then began to get ready for the long weekend that would start on Tuesday.
A shot from the Ponte Vecchio in the pouring rain.
Alex, Fernando and me in the villa after our day in Florence.

posted by Daniel Williams @ 00:50