Thursday June 2nd was a holiday in Italy – 150th anniversary of Italy becoming a republic. So, no school! Lorenzo had a bocce ball competition in Bologna so the whole family went to watch. It was a lot of fun to watch the competition. Lorenzo lost but he still played well and it was a great time with the family for the day! After the competition all the players and families have a large lunch together, talk, and play games in the afternoon. Later in the day Andrea, Lia, family friends of theirs, and I took a long bike ride out to a WWF wild life preservation area, spent some time there looking around, and then we rode our bikes home in the rain – I loved every minute of the trip because I enjoyed being with them and being outside!
The next monring on June 3rd the study abroad students left for Florence. . We arrived in Florence adn traveled directly to our hostel which was very nice and it has free breakfast too (free is always good, especially when everything is so expensive!). My group left the hostel, walked through the markets, and about the city – seeing the sites! We crossed the Ponte Vecchio which provided us with a beautiful view of the city river and then of course we had gelato (really can’t go ten blocks with out it!). We then found the galleria academia where there is the beautiful art work of Lorenzo Bartolini as well as Michelangelo’s original David statue. The history we learned about the art work and David’s statue was wonderful! After a full day of walking about the city we dressed to go to a restaurant we had made reservations at earlier in the day. We had a wonderful dinner. Ihad amy first dish of Alfredo pasta in Italy and it was served with peas – it was delicious! After dinner we went to an Americanized Italian college bar named the “The Lion’s Fountain.” They had shots for different colleges including KU (it was a prarie fire shot so I certaintly didn’t have that one!) We then went to a club called “Twice.” We danced a lot and we generally just had a very nice night out in Florence.
The next day mosto f our group was signed up to go on an out of town excursion so Taylor and I explored the city for the day. We walked almost 6 hours around Florence seeing so many sites – Piazzale de Michelangelo (which has the most beautiful view of Florence), S. Croce, an arch way (it looked like the coolest, tallest arch way on our map but it totally turned out o be a complete fail but we had a good laugh about it), we tried to see this gigantic garden (it was totally fortressed in and we probably spent 30 minutes just trying to find an entrance – which we never did), the Piazzale de Donatello, Basilica di San Lorenzo (it was built in 393!), Palazzo de Vecchio (it has some very beautiful and historic statues), and Dante’s house. Everything was of course beautiful and it was wonderful to see so much history. In teh evening we had a nice dinner, gelato, and night in with cards and lots of laughter.
During our last day in Florence we went to Catholic mass under the archbishop in Florence’s Duomo. It was quite an experience! Afterwards we headed to the Uffizi Art Gallery for a wonderful guided tour of art by Botticelli, Titian, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and other artists of the Renissance and Baroque periods. It was such a great experience! We had lunch after the Uffizi at the pizzeria where the Jersey Shore peeps are working (Jersey Shore’s new season is being currently taped in FLorence). It was the Jersey Shore’s day off but it was fun! We headed back towards the hostel after lunch. But before we returned we wished to do our last minute shopping. However, mother nature would not let us havour way. IT began to rain and hail like I have never seen before! It was crazy! We were completely soaked and the streets were so flooded that just within the hour we had to find a different way to get to the bus, for the bus to get to us, and for u sto get home in the bus. It was a terrible rain but we all just laughed…at least mosto f the time!
We had a great weekend and I wouldn’t change a thing about it really (besides that it was our last weekend in Italy L ) – it was wonderful!
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