Visitors

We had several visitors the past few weeks. First was Ben's friend Marc and his newly-wedded wife Kristine. After driving down to Florence from Germany, they toured Florence one day, then we all went together to San Gimignano and Pisa the next day. This way, they were able to cover four out of five goals of their trip: Seeing Michelangelo's David, eating real Italian pizza, seeing the leaning tower of Pisa and taking the standard tourist shots, and eating a bistecca alla fiorentina. The Colosseum in Rome will have to wait for another trip.
Next was another of Ben's friends, Martin, and his girlfriend Eva. The evening they arrived, we went to Piazzale Michelangelo to wait for the sunset. It was bridal rush hour -- we saw three brides take pictures in the hour we were there. Martin and Eva then toured Florence the next day before leaving for San Gimignano and Volterra.
The following weekend Kristen's parents visited. Since they had already seen Florence, Sienna, Pisa, and San Gimignano, we took them on a day trip to Bologna. Then Kristen went with them to Venice for a day. They stayed another day there, then went to Rome.

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.