A Taste of the City

We finally ventured over the Ponte Vecchio bridge to the other side of the river. Everything was MUCH quieter over there, and steeper.

The river from the Ponte alle Grazie bridge.
Crazy narrow streets... and people aren't afraid to haul ASS down them.

I want one. Badly.

Statues Revisited

We had a BEAUTIFUL day again today so Rabecca, Taya and I went exploring.

Again, the pigeon really makes the moment...
Neptune.
The Medusa statue again.

Fiesole!

Views of Florence from Fiesole... you can see the Duomo sticking above everything else in the middle-ish of these picturs.

It was SO windy up there, but at least the rain decided to let us have five minutes for pictures.

Ashley, from the other apartment, scolding me for taking pictures.

I do what I want! Gosh...

We went on a short trip outside of Florence to Fiesole today. Fiesole was perched up on the hills long before Florence existed and was home to the Etruscans (from whom the Romans "borrowed" a good chunk of their culture and technology from). In 1125 Fiesole was conquered by it's neighboring Florentines and became a part of Florence and can now be reached by bus #7 in 15 minutes from the Duomo.

A portion of the ancient city. This part was the baths... the pools and gymnasium were in the front portion, you can see a re-construction portion of the heating units (the red brick bits) on the right. The heated pools were in the back towards the arches and the potty rooms were also back there. Apparently going to the bathroom was a social event, you'd just plop right down next to your neighbor, stick your feet in a trough of cold water to get your personal plumbing up and running, and then camp out for a while. No joke.

The Etruscans also used radiant heat to heat the walls, floors and ceilings of the baths (red clay pipes funnelled the heat from the furnace through all surfaces, making everything nice and cozy.

The arches you can see from the above picture... you can see a bit of town on the left and clock tower.
Elizabeth Milliken, my Women's History, World History and Film class teacher.
And Ian Priestman who teaches my Human Relations class.
A shot of the Theater (also a reconstruction) that was absolutely masive, like everything in Europe... except the cars or apartments.
Little cast figures in the museum. I took these pictures before I realized I was actually in a museum (it looked like a little room) so I stopped because I'm pretty sure that no matter where in the world you go, you're still not supposed to be taking pictures in museums. I'm still not sure why that is... other than the fact that it might be disrespectful or something. Ah well...




These are the girls in the second apartment. Eventually I'll get to know them better, but for now they are "The girls from the other apartment" because there are many more of them, than there are of us.
The clock tower in town... again, the rain took a break for five seconds!

Flat Mates....

So these are the four people I live with. From left to right: Anna, me, Taya, Rebecca and.....

Cynthia who didn't make it into the first picture!

.... And Then I Was Dubbed the Best Chef in the WORLD

We went to the Standa grocery store (the only "supermarket" in Florence and I say supermarket in the broadest of senses, it's really really tiny) down the street to pick up things for our first dinner in the house. We've eaten out or with the class up until now so tonight was a special occasion.

While at the store I found this cake in a bag thing. And of course, you say to yourself "Cake... in a bag!? Why, this is genious!" just like I did and then immediately buy it. So it comes with everything and the instructions were pretty basic even if they were in Italian. So all you do is pour it into a pan and shove it in the oven. Which is

A.) genious

and

B.) totally fool-proof.

Until you remember that you don't know how to work this strange oven in a foreign country and that you don't read instructions very well when they're in English and will therefore be much worse off when they're in Italian.

At this point you should realize that something fabulous happens during the course of this experiment to make it blog-worthy.

One of my flat-mates, Taya, smoothing out this totally awesome purchase in a cake pan.

Alright at this point we've figured out how to work the gas oven (something none of us has ever done) AND succeeded in avoiding death by accidental gas leak. So at this point the story will not turn into fodder for a new CSI episode. I stick the pan in and sit down to watch over the sweets for the next 30 minutes while it bakes. 3.5 minutes later I'm throwing open the oven as smoke starts to seep around the door. Of course the burner at the top of the oven is hot and OF COURSE you don't stick the cake right up next to them. Right?

WRONG.

That's exactly what I do. But since I'm sitting there I was able to save it thus far. It continues to bake on the bottom shelf for the remain 30 minutes and, when the knife test comes out clean, is pulled from it's oven-womb and into the cold, cruel world. My next BRILLIANT idea is to quickly flip it over and try to tap it out of the pan, pretty much immediately.

Have you ever started to do something and mid-execution thought to yourself "This is NOT a good idea" but continue to do whatever it is you're in the process of botching anyway because you just can't stop yourself? Well this was the result of just such an incident.

So I'm sitting there trying to come up with a way to repair it.

Frosting? Good thought, but there isn't any.
Whipped cream? Another good one, but none to be found.
Smooshing? BRILLIANCE! And I have two hands with which to smoosh!

I've got to give Taya credit for this one. Since we couldn't glue it back together or really even scrape it into a shape, she came up with the idea of making a jelly-roll, or something which involved rolling the cake. Sounds good in theory, I mean, it couldn't get much worse so what the heck?

Anyway, long story short this poo-log was the end result. It tasted fabulous, so kudos on the cake-in-a-bag invention, BOOOOoooo to my cooking skills. Perhaps next time. I hear it comes in apple cake as well....

My Name's "Ima Tourist!"

Today was the first day I explored Florence on my own, so I decided to play tourist and hit a couple of hot spots.

The Duomo... obviously. We live pretty close to it, about three blocks to the East and we just about walk by it to get to the school.

Plazza della Signoria where a replica of the all so famous David statue resides. Trust me, he's in here too, don't you worry your pretty little head.

Cosimo I

Horsies! Part of the Fountain of Neptune, along with...

This guy. He's having some sort of fit but I couldn't get close enough to really see what sort of face he's making, but he definitely doesn't look like he's have a tremendous amount of fun.

Or is he?

Crazy hernia-genie-scroll man who wears a turban. Who knew?
The death of Medusa.Hercules and Cacus.... obviously not afraid to be a little gay.
You know... just a little.

Hercules and the Centaur.

The Rape of Sabines.

... which I have to say was my favorite. Not so much because of the theme, but how beautiful the shapes are and... you just can't put everything into words and the pictures don't even remotely do it justice.

Aaaaannndddd of course the David... or at least a copy.

And a close up of the dog head on the Hercules statue... the pigeons usually kind of mute the awesome effect of these huge statues... but this time it's just hilarious. So fearsome!