First Impressions

I am now in Florence, Italy! It was a long trip over - three hours on the tarmac at Dulles because of thunderstorms. My connecting flight to Florence was supposed to leave only an hour after I landed in Frankfurt, so needless to say, I missed that. I was thinking before I left that the only thing I was scared of for my first trip alone was missing my flight. But I was perfectly capable of handling the situation with the help of a friend I ran into on the plane and my recollection of the Frankfurt airport from my trip to Germany. Maybe I just needed a little bit of a test to gain some confidence in my own traveling abilities. And the best part was that we got bumped up to business class on our flight to Florence because those were the only seats left on the plane. I got shrimp cocktail for lunch on an airplane!

I already starting to get to know the city after a few days. Florence is extremely walkable; nothing is more than 15 or 20 minutes from our hotel on foot. The big tourist attractions are a stone's throw from our hotel. We are literally 30 seconds from the duomo, Florence's main cathedral, finished in the 1300's. I slept too late the first night and my roommates went out on their own, so I went out on my own too. I sat in the duomo for probably 45 minutes, just trying to take in all the architecture and people-watching. The building itself is incredible, from the height of the dome and the paintings decorating it to the intricate patterns in the floor's marble. Today I went inside the Baptistry, also. The Baptistery is right in front of the cathedral and it was actually completed before the cathedral itself. It has an octagonal shape, which our art history instructor told us was to represent the 7 days of creation plus the day of resurrection. The brochure in the Baptistery itself says that the 8 sides represent the 7 days of the earthly week and the eternal day at the second coming. Either way, the 8 sides are reminders of rebirth at baptism. The textbook we're using for art history explains how important public art was for reminding the people daily of their faith and explaining Bible stories to those who couldn't read - a tradition I think is lost on modern people in general. The Baptistery also has Byzantine-style mosaics on its dome. The single dome tells 6 or 8 Bible stories and also has a depction of Christ's judgment. The background of each panel is done in gold tiles - it is truly a sight to see.

I'm doing ok with my Italian. I'm trying to understand/read/speak as much as possible, but it's hard. All the waiters and shopkeepers speak English; even if you order in Italian, they usually answer in English. My Italian professor told us to ask people to speak to us in Italian, and if they don't, to leave. There are a million places to eat and shop in Florence, so we're not supposed to waste our time at a place where the help won't speak to us in Italian. We'll see if it works!
A dopo,
Ellen