Sunday Sightseeing

Kristen made it here on Tuesday, though one of her bags took a while longer. I’ll leave it to her to describe her process of getting used to Italy. Today was our first day of exploring and sightseeing together, and we wanted to go to the Rose Garden, which is only open for another week (and is located very close to the Iris Garden). We went there by bus and got off a stop early, at the church of San Miniato al Monte, an 11^th century Romanesque church located a little above the Piazzale Michelangelo. I really like this style of church for its simplicity, and this one boasted some nice frescoes as well, as well as a gilded mosaic above the altar. We’ll have to come back sometime to hear the monks chanting (apparently they do that every afternoon). We then walked down to the Piazzale Michelangelo, but didn’t linger for too long since it started lightly raining. Right there was the Rose Garden, which we walked through, but unfortunately it seems like it was a few weeks too late for roses – most of them had already bloomed. So we just walked back into the city, stopping to get gelato (ricotta & figs, and orange chocolate, among other flavors) on the way before taking the bus back to the apartment.

Later this afternoon, we went to Ikea for a couple of small things. It seemed like half of Florence was there – probably a consequence of it being one of the very few stores that are open on Sunday.

Busy Sunday

My parents came back to Florence yesterday to bring all the things that they took with them from Charlottesville, as well as a table and chairs as well as some herbs for the balcony. Again, their car was packed to the roof. So today, we went to Ikea to buy some other furniture for the apartment, especially a bookcase and a shelf for the bathroom. Since the apartment is still pretty small, storage space is at a premium. So the day was pretty much filled with shopping and then assembling the purchases at home. Now, however, the apartment definitely looks a lot more homely, and will do so even more once my pictures replace the ceramic plates and drawings of plants that were part of the inventory.

After dinner, I took my bike into the city, where I met Max and Caren, two friends from Charlottesville who are doing the typical Rome-Florence-Venice trip in Italy. Since I know them from dancing, it was only fitting that we decided to go to a milonga here in town. Luckily, the milonga I found on Sunday night isn’t too far from the city center, and we were able to walk there. Interestingly enough, the building where the milonga was taking place seemed to be affiliated with the communist party. Inside, there were already several people sitting around the dance floor at small tables, Buenos Aires style. We danced a bunch, even as the dancefloor filled up even more later on in the evening. Around 11:30, a band started playing, though they had to take a break pretty soon because they were having trouble with their bandoneón. Unfortunately, this meant that I missed most of their performance, since I left a little after midnight, since I had to work the next day. Nevertheless, I had fun dancing again, and am sure that I’ll be back there when Kristen is in town.