Sarahnissima
Italy and such as

Monday, June 16, 2008

This morning started with me moving slower than I anticipated. After moving around painfully slow for a couple hours I was finally somewhat presentable and ready for the world. I hopped on the 10:16 bus to I Tatti, which turned out to be just a tad bit too late for the prime seats at the library. As a result I ended up sitting at “the big table” with Dan.

Sitting with Dan was lovely. Sitting at “the big table” was terrible. While none of the chair options at I Tatti are particularly appealing, those at the big table are awful. When I sit in them my feet don’t reach the floor so my legs fall asleep. Plus the chairs, which have high backs and over-the-top arms, are so narrow that I can’t sit on one of my feet, as I tend to do when I’m at the computer for a while. And the table has a wooden beam that runs the length along the underside so that you can’t cross your legs when sitting in the ridiculously high chairs. Basically, you can’t move. You’re pinned into these crazy chairs (that may or may not have been passed from the mid-12^th century to I Tatti through a time portal), uncomfortable, with no feeling below the knees. Needless to say, I was not amused.

I am totally convinced that as a result of my bad chair situation I was unable to research. I couldn’t focus for the life of me and none of my sources were interesting or providing any insights. On top of it all, my stomach was making embarrassingly loud sounds that echoed throughout the giant room I was trapped in. After the 473^rd stomach growl of the morning I implored Dan to save me and agree that it was time for lunch.

Dan, Lara, and I had lunch together in the granaio like we do. I had my tub of risotto that I made last night, but I think I could have eaten more if it had been available to me. I was starving. Lara, being the little Betty Crocker that she is, had brought in some homemade chocolate cookies and I, mustering all the will power in the world, restrained myself to three cookies. I wanted 25. I took a couple shots of espresso and the three of us drug our sad, broken bodies back into the library.

A majority of my afternoon was spent trying unsuccessfully to rearrange myself in my giant chair while I IMed with my mom. Ok, ok. So I didn’t really get any research done, but at least I was at the library, right? I finally gave up on the whole thing and left I Tatti around 4:45.

I was joined on the bus by Clark, though I would wager that he wished he’d caught a different bus. By the time we were lurching and bumping along the winding city streets I was a grumpy monster. Something about a wasted day at the library, motion sickness, and that lovely aroma of hot, stinky Italians that characterizes city buses… I don’t know.

Once home I called up to Ciambella and she met me on the street level, saving me the trip up the steps. We went to Magi and made a massive grocery run. The bags weighed me down as I trudged up the steps to La Scala. Ciambella was in a pretty foul mood too so our place was not the nicest place in the world this evening.

I made tortellini with a rosemary and tomato sauce. It was okay. I put a dash of bad attitude in it, so I think that might have drowned out some of the flavor. We played some gin while we ate. Shortly after dinner I resigned to the hobbit hole. It was for the betterment of mankind.

Now, I’m sure that you have enjoyed today’s post since it’s so full of colorful imagery and positive thoughts, but I’m going to go to bed now. I need to shut my eyes for about a year.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Like yesterday, today started off slowly. I had already decided that I was not going to I Tatti today. I need a day to clear my mind of yesterday’s yuckiness. The good thing about not going up there is that I could take my time this morning. I took a long shower, made a huge breakfast, drank my espresso really slowly and read a few chapters in my non-school related book. In fact, I had a hard time putting it down (even though I do have some complaints and am not sure yet if I would recommend it). It interfered with my plan to leave for the school’s library by 11. Shucks. Hee hee.

I didn’t make it out the door for school until almost 1 in the afternoon. I wasn’t super psyched about working today and I was taking my annoyance out on every tourist I past. Lots of eye rolling and huffing. You know, really neighborly stuff like that.

Once at school I think I spent more time on YouTube than I did working on my symposium. Oops. Suddenly it was 5:30 and Ciambella was walking into the grad room. (She actually made me jump out of my skin when she opened the door.) We talked a bit, which helped me not work, then Sebastian walked in and talked a bit, more help not working. At around 7:30 we figured we had not worked for long enough and we took off for La Scala.

We made bland pizza for dinner tonight (what’s going on with our restaurant quality food these days?) and played some gin while we waited. Ciambella was staging a pretty decent comeback until I shocked the world of gin, winning 88 points in one hand. Oh, yeah. (I would like to dedicate that spectacular bit of card playing to my grandma, my gin Yoda.)

We closed up shop in the gin department and moved the “party” into the living room where we watched Italy play France in the UEFA cup. (Yes, I watched soccer.) It was pretty boring actually, just as I suspected soccer to be, but Ciambella and I figured that once Chris gets here he can teach us a bit about soccer and it will be more interesting. Maybe…

Just after halftime, or intermission, or the 45 minute mark, or whatever they call it, I left the crazy excitement in the living room and went down to the hobbit hole. I read a bit in my book and now I need to crash. That’s it for today. Fatto.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

So my night was interesting. I fell asleep shortly after hitting the pillow, which rarely happens with me, but was awoken around 11:30 by a text message from Vanessa Avery. My phone beeps and vibrates when a text comes in and the sound of it all, though in reality very quiet, scared the poop out of me—metaphorically speaking, of course. It didn’t seem to bother me too much and I fell right back to sleep only to be awoken at about 12:30am by my loud neighbors. They were screaming, I mean singing, again. They really are out of control. They were singing “Volare” at the top of their lungs. Of course, I probably don’t need to put this in the blog since I’m assuming the entire world was able to hear them loud and clear (key word: loud). I finally got out of bed, found my camera, prepared to video tape it so that I would have proof of the ungodly volume, then realized that it might seem a little creepy to be hanging out the window in the middle of the night tape-recording my neighbors’ party. So I put the camera away, got out the trusty earplugs and went back to bed. Even with the earplugs and a pillow over my head I could still hear them. What on earth is wrong with those people? And Italians think Americans are loud??? Oh, please.

So you can imagine that when my other neighbors woke me up at 6am I was pretty tired. It was that kind of tired where your mind is awake and listening the world around you, but your eyes are sealed shut. I laid their, half dead, for about an hour before finally giving in and getting up. I hopped in the shower and then got comfortable at the kitchen table with my bowl of Frutti Rossi and my glass of ACE (It’s an orange juice type drink with vitamins A, C, and E, hence the name. We call it “Ah-chay.”).

Ciambella and I were out the house by 8:30 and headed on to school to catch the bus from there. The early start would pay off.

As we were walking up the hill from the bus stop to I Tatti a horn honked behind us. Turning around, we saw that it was one of the guys who’s always at I Tatti and he happened to be driving a van. He picked up Ciambella and I along with another women who was walking the same route just behind us (she’s actually a professor at University of Miami, Ohio—Ohio representing!). After we’d gone about 50 yards or so, the van stopped and picked up another I Tatti wanderer. The research caravan arrived safely in the I Tatti parking lot at the top of the hill like a royal caravan, minus all the soldiers, flags, musicians, dancers, artillery, and assorted other accoutrement.

The early start allowed me the chance to sit not at the horrible big table, but at my usual desk. Ahhh… the comfort of my little desk. How I love it. I worked very, very hard today. I spent most of my morning “reading” a German book called Gesten und Gebarden and “translating” it into “English.” (The quotation marks are intentional.) It had a section all about my gesture, or at least as close to my gesture as it gets. The footnotes were the real prize. They had (I think) some really great gems of information in them and gave me two great sources (sadly neither in English) that I was able to pick up at I Tatti. I put the whole body of text through an online translator (notoriously bad idea) and then sent the whole document on to the delightful Mr. Gary Grubb in hope that he can flex his German muscles and read it over for me. (The writer of this blog would like to thank Mr. Grubb in advance! Ahem… “Danka shein, dar-ar-lin’, danka shein…”)

Before I was able to “finish” that, Ciambella stopped by my desk to let me know that the crew was going to lunch. Ciambella, Dan, Lara and I ate in the granaio and spent a considerable amount of time staring off into space with dazed looks on our faces. I took two shots of espresso.

After lunch it was back to Deutschland, but not for too long. I finished up that section around 3ish and moved on to an article called “Une Fresque Visigothique et L’Inconographie du Silence.” Though not in English, I can actually move through French pretty quickly. So I spent the rest of my day reading that. I didn’t finish it up, unfortunately, and it had all kinds of good stuff in it, fortunately, so it looks like I’m off to I Tatti again tomorrow.

I practically had to get kicked out of the library today. Ciambella and I left right at 6 and headed down the hill to the bus stop where we met up with Dan and Lara, who had missed the previous bus. The four of us rode back into Florence in a haze of intellectual drainage. By the time Ciambella and I exited the bus by the Duomo, my stomach was undulating, and my nose was crying from the stink I had just been immersed in. We got home, somehow, and made an easy risotto dinner, which we ate over a few hands of gin—come sempre.

After dinner I knew that it was no use for me to stay up in the world of humans so I went to the hobbit hole. That’s where you find me now. It’s 9:14, my eyes are blurry and my brain is foggy. I’m in desperate need of sleep since I can already tell that tomorrow is going to be another long day. So, barring anything really exciting, I’m going to call this the end of today’s post. Have a great night.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

This morning I awoke around 6, but I wasn’t my grumpy normal self. I was actually almost okay with being awake. I wasn’t okay enough with it to get up, but I laid in bed smelling the delicious aroma of freshly-baked pastries wafting in through my bedroom window for about an hour until finally getting up around 7.

I used my mad ninja skillz in the kitchen as I silently made my breakfast, a fresh pot of espresso, and my lunch. Ciambella didn’t suspect a thing. All those ninjas out there should be very proud of me. I’m like a totally sweet mime who does real stuff. Ok. I don’t actually know what that means. Moving on…

I was out the door (rushing, though I have no idea how that happened) by 8:45. I stopped in at the bar on the corner for my bus tickets (and almost purchased a pastry) then scurried over to the bus stop by the duomo. The bus came within minutes of my arrival. I don’t think I’ve ever had a more beautifully timed trip to the bus stop.

The ride to I Tatti was pleasant. I planted myself in a very comfortable spot right next to a kindly-looking nun wearing very practical shoes. A woman boarded the bus with a baby in a car seat and as the bus bounced down the road the baby’s cheeks jiggled like a bowl of Jello. All the while the baby’s eyes were fixed on its mother with a look that could only be described as, “What on earth have you gotten us into this time??”

I arrived at I Tatti at about 9:15, got my locker, signed in, and went to my (available) desk. I was the only one there. It was wonderful. It was so quiet and calm. Ahhh… The end of the week is definitely the best time to be there. I guess the fellows have better things to do on Thursdays and Fridays. I didn’t see another soul until just before 10 when Lara bounded by with her computer in her arms.

And so began another day of long, very tedious work…

I spent my morning finishing the French article I started yesterday. I was actually having some trouble with it. I got stuck on quite a few sentences at the end and was starting to lose my cool a little. It had several phrases in Greek (or probably more likely Coptic) and a lot of sections in Latin. So, as any intelligent scholar would do, I forwarded the tough stuff to my dad assuming that he either magically knows Coptic or is in a good position to find someone who does. We’ll see how that goes.

After finishing the French, my tour around the world brought me to the Nederlands and an article called “Silentium.” Yeah, so the German was really tough, the French I’m not too bad at, the Italian I can handle, but Dutch??? Really? Not so good, I gotta say.

Realizing that there was no way I was dragging myself back to I Tatti again tomorrow, I knew that I had to get all the Dutch down before I left today. You can’t check books out at I Tatti and since I was planning on putting the entire article into a translator I figured I might as well type out the whole thing straight away. So I did. I typed double-time, or shall I say double Dutch time? I typed Dutch nonsense for about two hours before I bullied Dan and Lara into going to lunch with me.

We had lunch in the granaio, you know, like we do. Sadly, Lara didn’t bring any homemade cookies. I had two shots of espresso. All things were as they often are except that Steph was at I Tatti today so it was Casa LSD and me. We showed serious signs of procrastination after lunch as we sat around staring at each other talking about nothing (I expressed a concern over the quantity of hair on my arms. I’m thinking that I might be part werewolf, but it could just be my imagination.) Grudgingly we moved back over to the library for our afternoon of learning adventures.

My afternoon was entirely consumed with typing Dutch nonsense. I finished transcribing the article around 5 (with an hour to spare, thank you very much) so I started putting it through a translator. I got the entire article, with the exception of a few footnotes, into the translator before I had to leave at 6, but I didn’t have any time to look at what the translations said. Before I get into the delightful ways in which the free online translator worked magic on the article, here are some things I learned in Dutch today:

“zwijgen” means “be silent” (ex. “Zwijgen!”)

“de vinger op de lippen” means “the finger on the lips” (totally obvious, but I liked it since it’s my gesture)

Ok. So first things first. I wasn’t kicked out of the library today so that’s a bonus. I left on my own volition at about five minutes to six. (Total time at the library today, as yesterday: 8hr 45min.) I got my stuff and trekked down the winding road, past the olive grove and the castle and the 15^th-century church and the brook and the cyprus trees and the other castle and the stream with gurgling water and the happy butterflies twirling gaily in the sunbeams… all the way down to the bus stop. And who was waiting for me? Well it was the Lara, Steph, and Dan. It seems they missed their bus (for the second day in a row). Poor them. They looked miserable. So I tried my best to be my normal, obnoxious self until the bus came.

The ride back into Florence was considerably different than my experience with the nun this morning. For starters, there was a persistent, shooting pain rocketing through my neck and shoulders. Then, in a very unfortunate turn of events, a herd of wet Italian teenagers boarded the sweat mobile, compressing the space exponentially. Then, something really exciting happened. The bus stopped and didn’t really move for a long time. Hurrah! There had been an accident and the traffic was a mess. Lara summed up the experience beautifully when she said, “This… is… … … awful.” I concurred.

We leapt of the bus at the stop outside the Piazza Savonarola. Normally I would stay on the bus until the Duomo stop, but not today. No way. And so I put on my sunglasses and sweated my way back home in the slanted light of the late afternoon in Florence. Ciambella had called me earlier to suggest a date at the ka-tom place tonight, which I readily accepted so after running up the 76 stairs in order to change clothes (necessary) and wash my hands for an hour to remove the grime and disease of the bus (very necessary), I ran back down the 76 stairs where I found Ciambella loitering in the street.

We moved all the way down the street (well, two doors down) to the ka-tom place where we were pampered like royalty. The Ka-tom people like us, especially Ciambella. We got tons of free Freedom Fries (is that still the cool name?) and Ciambella got the crap popped out of her aching back. That was a service I never would have imagined was performed at a ka-tom joint. Huh. Who knew?

We took our ka-toms and our sodas (me with my orange Fanta, of course) and walked over to the Arno. We ate just on the other side of the Ponte alle Grazie where I promptly dropped my bottle cap into the river by accident. See? One minute you’re enjoying the beautiful sunshine, the next you’re a nasty, horrible litter bug. Funny how life can turn on you. After we ate we thought it best to try to walk off the ka-toms we had just devoured like animals so we crossed the bridge and sat in the little park on the other side of the river by where the damn is in the Arno (you can see it in the satellite images—it’s right across the river from the Biblioteca Nationale). We sat there for quite a while finding little things to entertain us. My favorite was the long, skinny, slithery line of ants that crossed the sidewalk in front of us. I thought, “if only I could be that organized!”

We didn’t dally too long and soon we were crossing back over toward the city center and La Scala. Once home, I changed (again) and headed to the hobbit hole. My plan was to watch a movie or something fun, but I couldn’t help but check out my translations from earlier today. So, finally, here they are (Remember, this is from a free online translator):

“The illustration shows a standing men figure that bears flattened through the and the write-table in the summier indicated leave, characterized becomes as a scholar.” (uh-huh, sure.)

“Born about the winterzonnewende, in origin he the god was of the creative, creating word, a vruchtbaarheidsgod at who the honor counts of the field plant sacrificed became.” (yes, yes)

“As Johannes the doper, the kinderfiguur most level, bitches the Christ child with the public live heralded thus.” (hum… not sure I understand this one.)

I’m serious. That’s what I got. Anyone out there speak Dutch by any chance? If you do and you want to translate an article for a very sweet grad student, let me know. I’ll send you some cheese or something as payment.

And so, it’s now 11:32pm and too late to turn on a movie. I think I put in a good 15 hours of research today. Well, I don’t know about that. I’m an art history student not a mathematician. Regardless, I’m spent. Good night to you all. I’ll write again soon.

Friday, June 20, 2008

This morning I awoke to an empty apartment. Ciambella had left early this morning for Rome so the place was quiet as I made my morning espresso and my breakfast. I accidentally got hooked into reading my book and as a result spent about two hours just sitting at the table reading in the sunlight.

I finally decided that I should probably be going so I packed up my bag and headed out toward school. The tourists were driving me crazy again today as I weaved in and out of the crowds of blankly-staring visitors. As I neared the Piazza Savonarola I saw a woman standing at the door of a salon. She had amazing hair and a cute dress and I thought, “I bet she would do a great job with my hair, maybe I should go there.” Then, as I passed her, she turned and I noticed that a massive white bandage was covering half her face including her left eye. “Uh, maybe I’ll wait until that heals first,” I thought, weighing the pros and cons of a one-eyed hairdresser in my mind.

Once at school I printed up all of my notes and my translations from this past week and messed around on my email for a while. My mind was anywhere but on my work. I was having a terrible time focusing. I knew that my time at the library would be short and short it was. I left after only a few hours and headed back home to procrastinate and daydream in the comfort of my own home.

On the way back I stopped in at Conad the Barbarian Grocery Store and picked up some goodies for dinner. That’s one of the fun things about being alone at home: you can eat whatever you feel like it and not worry a bit about what someone else might think. So I bought ice cream.

Vanessa Avery came over around 9pm and the two of us settled in with a couple bottles of wine and The Philadelphia Story, my all-time favorite movie. She had never seen it before and she has a very refined taste in movies (Translation: she likes the same kinds of movies I do) so she loved it as I knew she would. We had a great time despite, or perhaps on account of, the trough of wine we consumed. Now, I need to retire for the evening. Something tells me I will sleep just fine tonight…

Saturday, June 21, 2008

So I was wrong. I didn’t sleep well last night. In fact, I hardly slept at all. Every little sound made me jump and with each crack and pop of the building I imagined crazed killers creeping in through the open windows upstairs. Ok. So, yes, the windows were open. They have to be. It’s been a little toasty here lately. However, there is the most hardcore lock I’ve ever seen on the front door and the window anyone could possibly get into is the kitchen window. So I suppose that if someone really wanted to they could scale the wall up six stories then climb across the rooftops then scale another wall and climb in. I do not, however, in the light of day consider that to be a very probable scenario.

To make a very short story unnecessarily long, I didn’t sleep well last night.

As a result, I was a lazy, lazy bum today and I didn’t even feel guilty about it. Ciambella is still in Rome, it’s approximately 4,000° outside, and I really don’t like thinking about silence in monastic communities right now. So… this will be yet another short blog entry.

I watched three movies all in a row, while I laid on the couch in the dark, balancing bowls of food on my stomach like a glutton and drank about 15 gallons of ice water while the fan blew warm air at me the entire time. That’s about it. Oh, and then for a short while I read my book, but decided that I preferred the staring at the movie option much more.

Well, there it is. Now you know just how lazy I can be. And so, after a long day of doing nothing, I’m spent. Goodnight, my peeps.

Sunday, June 22, 2008

This morning when I woke up the apartment was swelteringly hot. I think the water in the ice tray in the freezer was actually boiling (possible exaggeration). As I marinated in the heat I enjoyed my breakfast of strawberry jam toast, nectarine, and banana with my espresso. I’ve heard that if you drink something hot while you’re hot it will actually cool you off. Don’t know if that’s true, but it’s worth a shot, right? My findings show that I was just as hot after I had my hot drink as I was before.

I got ready today in the dark heat (all the blinds are pulled to block out the sun and I was too hot to flip the switch to turn the lights on). Soon I was heading down the steps in hopes of finding the streets at least a little more bearable. I would like to pause for just a moment and say that for those of you who may not know me, I am a hot weather person. I love it. I would take being too hot over being too cold any day of the week. I detest winter and am not particularly fond of wearing socks. I even like humidity. I find that it does wonders for my hair and skin. I don’t even mind sweating. I mean, what can you do, really? As long as I’m not cold with purple fingernails and knees, shivering, wondering what happened to the sun, remembering the summers of my youth, teeth chattering, goose bumps, having to wear layer after layer of clothing until you more closely resemble the State Puff Marshmallow Man than a human being. That’s being cold and it’s miserable in my opinion. What’s the moral of this story? If I say it’s hot, than it must be really, really hot.

My plan for the day was to recharge my phone and get a new calling card. As it turned out I couldn’t find an open tabbachi shop anywhere so that plan was scratched. I did manage to stumble into an accessories shop and pick up some earrings (molto importante). I spent a few hours walking around window shopping at Fendi and Tiffanies before turning back toward the home goods store to get some pillows. Unfortunately for me an evil mastermind was at work. The pillow place was closed and since Standa the most disgusting grocery store ever was right next door I thought, “hum, maybe I’ll pick up something for dinner tonight.” So, I picked up some fruit and some more milk and some prosciutto and some yogurt and then took my place in line. It got warmer and warmer with every passing second. I stood there minute after minute, helpless, as my life ticked by one miserable moment at a time. The blank look of resignation mixed with longing on my face mirrored that of my fellow shoppers as we stood with slumped shoulders and broken spirits in the sizzling, smelly aisle. Suddenly, the situation turned grave. Two women started throwing a fuss at the register about the price of a cantaloupe (a standoff that was to last for over 20 minutes) and a child, channeling Lucifer himself, began screaming at the top of his little, devilish lungs. His sobbing and screaming was the icing on the cake. I recalled Lara’s words from the bus trip of horror, “This… is… … … awful.”

Finally, I emerged, wiser and tougher, from the pit of despair and out into the world. I ran away from nasty Standa as quickly as I could back to La Scala where sure it may be hot, but at least that devil child wouldn’t be there. I was right about one thing: it was hot. Really hot. What is that line from Good Morning Vietnam? You know, when he talks to Roosevelt E. Roosevelt? “Fool, it’s hot! I told you again! Were you born on the sun? It’s that hot!” So I ran away into the “cool” air of the hobbit hole.

The heat (and my struggles at Standa) had made me sleepy so I settled in with a little Robbie Redford and The Natural, one of the best movies ever. That really is such a great flick. Ahhh… I love it. I tried to look over my notes, but I didn’t actually get any work done. I just laid there like a slug, like Randy.

After the movie I made some dinner and watched Italy lose to Spain in penalty kicks. I was very, very disappointed and more than a little irritated that I stayed up watching the whole game just to see my team lose. So, it’s now waaay past my bedtime and I need to call it a day. Good night to you all.

Monday, June 23, 2008—Chris is here!!

Despite my excitement, I was pretty tired when I woke up this morning. I got up and tried my best to make myself look pretty. Today was a big day. Today I was going to the airport to gather up my hubby to bring him back to the hobbit hole.

I left for Santa Maria Novella around 8:30 (his plane was scheduled in around 9:30) and caught the 9:05 bus to the airport. As I arrived my heart beat faster and faster. I scanned the arrivals list for his plane, a task which was quite simple since only about five planes are listed at a time (the Florence airport is pretty dinky). Then I saw it: Frankfurt—9:19—landed. Landed! Ahhh! I stood with the other people waiting for loved ones and fidgeted the entire time. Every time the doors opened to release weary travelers into the arms of their family members, my heart caught in my chest. Is this him? Will this be him? Passenger after passenger walked out, but still no Chris. After what seemed like an eternity, finally, he appeared.

It was so strange. He looked so different to me. I felt like I didn’t recognize the person resembling my husband. What a bizarre sensation. He was wearing a light blue t-shirt and the color looked great on him. My eyes welled up right away and I just ran into him. It was so good to see him. It’s been too long.

We took a taxi back to the apartment and he got his first taste of the 76 steps of La Scala. I think he really loved them. (Does the sarcasm translate?) He hopped in the shower and afterwards we went out on the town. I was determined to make him adjust to the new time zone as quickly as possible. No napping on my watch!

We walked around Florence a bit, over through the Piazza della Signoria, down Via dei Calzaiuoli, past the Duomo, around and around, down Via dei Servi, through the Piazza Santissima Annunziata, down Via Gino Capponi, across the Viale and on over to school. Whew! So now he’s been able to see where it is that I go to all the time. That walk right there pretty much sums up my life here. Oh, wait! No, summing up my life would involve going to the grocery store… so we went to the grocery store.

I was nice when we got back from our walk and I let him sleep for a little bit. Around 5 I packed up a small lunch of leftover ravioli from the other night, peaches, oranges, cheese and prosciutto, and a bottle of wine and we took off on another walk. All of this walking may sound familiar to my other visitor to Florence, Jen, who came to Sarah’s Florentine Boot Camp for Spring Break.

Chris and I walked up to the Piazza Michelangelo for one of the best views in city. We ate our picnic dinner on a little stone bench next to the winding road that weaves its way from the dirt-ridden streets of Florence up into beautiful hills of Tuscany. After dinner we walked up the hill a little higher to what I consider the most beautiful church in Florence, San Miniato al Monte. It’s so gorgeous. It’s just so peaceful in there and when you leave the church you’re greeted with the view of the city all spread out below you. It’s a trip well worth the exercise.

Our walk back into the city took us over the Ponte Vecchio and to the Piazza della Signoria so Chris could be a tourist for a while (so embarrassing!). Then we moved slowly back to the apartment for some bad TV in the very stuffy, hot apartment.

And with that I bid you adieu.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008—HAPPY ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST DAY!

I woke up several times this morning, but actually got up around 9. The house was totally silent. Ciambella had gotten back from Rome in the wee small hours of the morning and was still down for the count up in the attic. Chris was passed out. It was just me and my lonesome, hanging out in the kitchen alone… all alone. (I’m channeling Stymie now.) I made some espresso and finished my book. And waited. And waited. And waited.

It wasn’t until about noon that the rest of the house began to stir. I was already all set for my day by then. We all sat around and talked. I started making lunch for Chris and I, margarita pizza (tomato, mozzarella, and basil). We sat around and talked some more. Once he was all ready to go Chris and I peaced out and went out for Day 2 of Sarah’s Florentine Boot Camp.

We walked over to the otrarno and headed to the Pitti Palace. It was hot out, but really beautiful so I figured the Bobali Gardens would be a great spot to spend this lovely St. John the Baptist Day (St. John the Baptist is the patron saint of Florence). I got my ticket for free thanks to my magic museum card so I didn’t feel so bad paying a whole lot of money to walk around some pretty trees for Chris. The gardens are really beautiful and they just go on and on. We wandered down just about every single trail we could find. One of these days I’m going to go over there wearing a big, flowy 15^th century Carnivale dress and just run through the pathways. I feel like the Boboli Gardens would be the perfect venue for that sort of frippery.

After spending a couple hours in the gardens and the costume museum (boring) we headed back towards the apartment, stopping at Gelateria Neri for a special treat. We got back to La Scala at about 6:30, just in time to see the end of the Calcio Storico big finale. Remember? That’s the weird anything goes soccer/rugby/football/American Gladiators/wrestling game that they play here in Florence. The quarter of Santa Maria Novella was playing the quarter of Santa Croce (that’s my hood). Sadly, Santa Maria Novella was tougher, stronger, and more brutal than the delicate criminals playing for Santa Croce and the quarter of the sun beat my hood 9 ½ to 4. Don’t ask me how you score a half point because I don’t know. I think that it might have something to do with the beach ball bouncing on the ground before going over the low wall. I don’t know. It’s all very confusing.

Ciambella and the Quiet One came back right as the game was ending, much to the dismay of the Quiet One since he’s never actually watched a match before. The four of us sat around and watched some Italian MTV. We watched the Hills, dubbed, and made fun of all the people on it for about 20 minutes. That was about the time when it became clear that we needed to leave the apartment right away.

We went over to Casa di Festa and hung out with Vanessa Avery for awhile before heading down to the river to watch the St. J the B Day fireworks. We planted ourselves just past the Ponte alle Grazie and waiting for the celestial sparkling to start.

It started just about on time, just after 10, and wowed the crowd for about 40 minutes. 40 minutes of okay and occasionally really impressive fireworks. I was so happy. I couldn’t get enough fireworks to satisfy me, but I’ll take a fireworks show over the Arno any day.

When they ended, we reconvened for a quick bit back at Casa di Festa and then Chris and I marched our hungry butts over to ka-toms, Ciambella and the Quiet One went to La Scala, and Vanessa Avery went to Lion’s Fountain. With our stomachs full and happy, Chris and I joined Vanessa Avery over at Lion’s and spent about an hour listening to some live music.

All in all it was a very full St. John the Baptist Day. I have to wonder what he would think of how my day was spent…

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