Italy is beautiful.
I’m living in Piazza Isidoro del Lungo, right near Piazza della Liberta, in a third floor apartment. It’s really nice and huge and airy and great. It houses 10 other girls (big change from last semester) in 7 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, a living room with a tiny study niche and fireplace, and a whole hallway of closets that we haven’t even begun to fill, even with 11 of us. A few of the bedrooms and the living room have small balconies that overlook a tiny courtyard. I have a single in the apartment, which is nice because it helps keep me sane among all this estrogen, and I have a window that looks out to the interior of the apartment building, so I can spy on all of our neighbors and judge them by the laundry they have drying out their windows.
NYU owns a villa (La Pietra) on the outskirts of the city - the city itself isn’t actually that big, it’s very walkable. The walk to La Pietra is only about 20 minutes, and there’s a bus line that runs from right around the corner up to campus, but the walk is really pretty so I think I’ll probably skip the bus unless it’s raining. The campus is gorgeous, all stereotypical Tuscan villas and gardens. There’s this really pretty, long gravel drive up to the main building that’s lined with tall skinny trees - it looks like a movie set. La Pietra itself is a historical landmark with 5 acres of gardens (we have a formal dance there at the end of the semester), and then there are also 4 other buildings on campus, which is where I’ll take most of my classes. My photography class meets in a different part of Florence, in a photography studio (imagine that), so this weekend I’ll try to figure out my way there.
Most of the people I’ve met are pretty nice. I’ve become pretty close with one of my roommates, Erin. We, and occasionally another roommate, have been spending a lot of time exploring Florence because being in the apartment for a long amount of time with this many people is a little wearing, not that we wouldn't be out wanding around anyway. Our first night we went to Il Duomo, which is about a five minute walk, and found a really cute gelato place, and decided that it’s completely acceptable to have gelato for dinner… The food here is generally delicious, lots of really fresh fruits and veggies, and really, really great bread and cheese. A crowd of us went out last night and spent about 3 hours eating dinner, pasta.
Today was our first really free day, we’ve had a few days of orientation, so Erin and I went to Fiesole, this really quaint little hillside town right outside of Florence. There’s a bus that goes up there, but we wanted to explore so we walked, which ended up taking a few hours. I loved, loved, loved it, the countryside here really is very, very beautiful. Pictures later.
I miss everyone, but I feel like this semester is going to go by much faster than I want it to and it won’t be long before I’m back in Maine.