January 22, 2006

went running in the morning.
went on a walking tour through the area around Santa Croce for my Architecture in Italy class. The piazza in front of Santa Croce always has different activities going on, and today was a chocolate festival. Once we were done with class, Nikul, Ash, Pat, Kelly, Izzy, and I walked around the chocolate festival. We all got hot chocolate (I got the orange flavored hot chocolate), which was really good. It was really thick as if they just melted chocolate. There were so many cool things there. Some vendors had animals, instruments, tools, and all sorts of things made out of chocolate.
went to Italian class.
learned about and sketched Palazzo Rucellai (the building that houses our school) and Piazza de Rucellai during studio. Even though today was my day with the most classes, it was really like I only had one. That's what's so cool about studying here, that we explore the city so much more than sit in lecture.
had family dinner at the other boys' place and then went out exploring Florence with some of the gang. We went to this one hippie pub that was pretty cool and checked out some other places around the city.



January 23, 2009
went to Fiesole with Nadia, Izzy, Pat, Jarrod, and Nikul. Fiesole is this little town up in the hills above Florence that's supposed to have amazing views. Unfortunately it's always foggy so a camera can't come close to capturing it. We took the bus up to the main piazza in the center of town and explored the surrounding hillside. The hills were soooo steep. We ate lunch at this little pizzeria and then attempted to go to the museum and Roman ruins. The place was going to close in 45 minutes, though, so we didn't think it was worth it to pay the 6 euro. Instead we walked around the outside and peeked over the walls and between cracks to see the ruins. We were all pretty sastified with what we could see for free. Then we explored some more and talked to a couple different old Italian men. Each one told us a different little fact about the area, but none of them spoke English, so it was interesting to try to figure out what they were saying. When we were all too cold and tired to enjoy the hillside anymore, we hopped on a bus back home.