I think I'm getting lazy...I warned you though

So I'm not really sure if i've just been really busy or I'm getting lazy, but here's an update for whoever's wondering.

I've sorta stopped going out to dinner a lot for whatever reason, so I've been cooking like mad lately. Despite the fact that I live with two guys who're attending culinary school school here, I've decided that I'm the best chef in the house ;-). I'm trying not to go to the supermarket a lot, as much as I like meeting people there. I've been going to the market more instead and getting mostly fruits and vegetables. I'm still a little nervous to go to the meat and fish stands in the market, but I'll get there eventually. I think I'm gunna try to buy clams this week for clam sauce. I'm not really sure what happened, but I've gotten addicted to mushrooms here. I don't even like mushrooms...well at least I never have before. So staples lately have been mushrooms, spinach, zucchini, oranges, bread, and just a crapload of white wine in whatever i cook. Lis, I know you wanted pictures of the market and I tried to take a few, but only one of them really came out since I was trying to do it discreetly cause I was embarrassed. The rest of them are blurry...but there ya go. Thats one side out of 4, and then there's a building in the middle with all the meats, cheeses and breads. I'll try harder next time. 

Oh, and cooking related. In my culinary class the past two weeks we've made pasta frutti di mare (w/clams, mussels, calimari, cuttlefish, shrimp), pasta nero di sepia (a black sauce made from the cuddlefish ink. its really good, but it stains your mouth for a few minutes.), ossobucco (braised veal shank), and saffron risotto. I love this class cause there's always enough for me to have a full meal.

Last week, the president of Stony Brook, Shirley Strum Kenny, and the Dean of International Academic Programs, who I had for anthropology freshman year, came to school to celebrate the new partnership between Florence University of the Arts and Stony Brook. That was pretty cool; the administration here was making a big deal about it. I got a free dinner out of it and I got to chat with Dr. Kenny for a few minutes, which was nice. Oh, and I went to town on the brioche at the breakfast reception...

Other than that, I recently found this guy who plays guitar on a street next to Piazza della Signoria and Palazzo Vecchio. He's out there every night at 9 pm or so and he's surprisingly good. He's pretty much limited to any kind of folky mellow guitar covers, but he's very good at it. I'm talking about Bob Dylan, James Taylor, Paul Simon (he does a great Paul Simon), and maybe a little Jack Johnson or something...thats usually when I leave. But the next picture shows the tower of Palazzo Vecchio in the back, I thought it was nice looking, so I share.

The weather has been awesome here lately; pretty much sunny and in the mid-60's every day, so I went for a walk a few days ago to the big park down the river with the hippodrome. Since there's just about no green in the city, I like walking to the few parks just so I can see some trees and grass. I think the one in the next few pictures is the biggest park in Florence. I wouldn't really consider Boboli Gardens a park, but that may be bigger. No one keeps their dogs on leashes in the park and the dogs wander really far away a lot of times, so when I went the other day with my roommate, this little jack russell terrier walked with us for about 10 minutes, with no owner in sight. We eventually left the path and found this big lawn with a bunch of soccer games and what looked to me like a bunch of American high school kids playing football. I haven't played any sports since coming here, so it would have been nice to play, but I wasn't really dressed appropriately.

The picture below is Boboli Gardens, the private park/garden of the Medici family. It was really nice, but it closes sorta early so we didn't have as much time as I wanted to look around. I'll definitely be back there within the next week or so if it's nice. That day, I also went back to the Uffizi gallery and saw some things that I missed last time like Botticelli's Birth of Venus and La Primavera (Allegory of Spring). I also saw some Da Vinci, which I didn't see last time. I also visited the Accademia the other day and saw Michelangelo's David. Now, I figured it would be nice, but I didn't expect to be as blown away as I was. First of all, it's a lot bigger than I thought it'd be. Secondly, I've never seen a sculpture with as much detail. You can see veins, tendons, ribs, and all kinds of other little details. I thought it was really incredible, maybe you'll see it sometime, I recommend it.

On Sunday, I saw a soccer match: ACF Fiorentina vs. Palermo. That was a cool experience. Fiorentina played a terrible match, losing 0-2, but hopefully Ill get to see a few more matches and maybe they'll win. They're actually pretty good, I think they're 4th in the league now.

Other than that, I've been stressing out the entire last week trying to book planes and trains for my spring break. I finally got it all figured out and booked, but I definitely should have done it earlier. I almost booked myself to Berlin without a way back. So here's the plan: Thurs afternoon 3/19 - train to Milan. Sat afternoon 3/21 - Flight to Prague. Tues morning 3/24 - Train to Berlin. Thurs night 3/26 - Train to Vienna. Sunday night 3/29 - Train to Firenze. Back home Monday morning around 6am, class on Tuesday.

Also, dunno if i mentioned this before, but I've also booked trips to Sardinia from 4/2-4/6 and Sicily from 5/7-5/11. I found really good train fares to Nice, so I may book that for 4/30-5/4. Andrew Bird is playing in Lyon on the 30th, so maybe I'll spend one night there and then go to Nice :-).

That should tide you over for now.

Night.

Here and there...a hodgepodge of nothingness

So this week I didn't really end up doing anything super special. I hung around the city a bunch; went to a few bars, a few restaurants. The weather's been great, so I spent a lot of time outside walking around. The weather for this weekend says 66 and sunny, so I'm pretty excited for that. I think there's a chance I'm going to Rome this weekend, so that'll be the biggest trip I've done so far. I really gotta get on planning some bigger trips. I've been getting lazy, so I sorta stopped planning things.

So lets see, what happened this week:

-I got my first look at the Uffizi gallery this week. I had to wait forever for my museum card to get sent to me so I could get admission into the place. I got there about an hour before closing, so I just went to scope it out and take a quick look, I have all semester to go back and look around. In the small portion I looked at, I saw a bunch of Raphael, Michelangelo, Titian, Lippi, Durer, Rembrandt; it was really cool.

-I saw the first thing on tv that both made sense to me and interested me. The italian MTV did a top 50 rock music video countdown! Not the top 50 ever, but some top 50...it had The Strokes, Kaiser Chiefs, The Darkness, Franz Ferdinand...Bon Jovi? But the big stuff in Italy right now comes down to 3 or 4 songs. There's some song by The Killers about whether or not they're humans or dancers. It's stupid, I dunno. There's this song by some italian lady that features james blunt, which sucks too. James Blunt sings a few words in italian and I'm convinced he doesn't really know italian. The big song here is a song called This is the Life by this Irish (I think) lady named Amy McDonald and they play it alllll the time. I may go see Animal Collective play in a few weeks, so that might be cool.

-This past weekend was my housemate's birthday, and we had been planning to go to either Genova, Cinque Terre or the Portofino Italian Riviera area the next day. Needless to say, as it was his 21st birthday the night before, we weren't able to get out of the house to catch our train to what we decided would be Cinque Terre. Oh well, I hope I can get somewhere this weekend.

-I had a few really good dinners this week. I went out to a place called Trattoria Contadino which was a homestyle, little family place. They only had a few tables and no paper menus. The owner just came over and read off a few pasta dishes, meat dishes and side dishes and you just pick one of each. Very good and very filling. I also went to this more upscale place called Acqua al 2 with a friend and got the best pasta dish I've had here by far. It was fusilli lungo mascarpone e funghi porcini (long pasta with mascarpone cheese and porcini mushrooms). Apparently they have a location in San Diego too...Other than that, I cooked a bunch of times this week. I made a bunch of pasta dishes with sauteed vegetables and chicken and what not.

-I had a quiz in my European Union class yesterday, which i think i did pretty well on. I think I mentioned this before, but this class is getting better and better every time I go to it. My teacher is a young lady, but she really knows her stuff, she's like a book. This class, we got into more contemporary European Union stuff, like in the 80's and 90's. Before that, we were just talking about different beginnings to the european integration and various supranational institutions. One of the biggest themes of the attempts for european integration and a european union in the past has been the nationalism of the european countries and the fact that they all want to preserve their national sovereignty. So that brings me to what I think was the most interesting part of this last class. Out of the 3 main branches of the EU, the Parliament, which is the only body with democratic legitimacy, holds the least power. The other branches are made of of appointees made my each member state's government. The Parliament has gained some power in the last 10 years or so, but for the first 5-10 years, it seemed like the Parliament was just there to make people think they had a voice and shut them up. Weird.

-The President of Stony Brook, Shirley Strum Kenny and the Dean of International Academics are both coming here tomorrow to cut the ribbon on the new partnership between Stony Brook and Florence University of the Arts. Whenever I see the Dean (Dr. Arens), he always tells me I don't know how to dress, but other than that, he's a nice guy. I had him for an Anthropology class freshman year, which is still one of my favorite classes at Stony Brook. I think me and Ashley also really became friends in that class.

-Alright, rapidfire before I wrap it up....I made paté in my cooking class last week, still don't love the stuff. I think we're making pasta frutti di mare this week. I've been eating oranges like crazy. The blood oranges and clementines here are amazing. I've been getting really frustrated thinking about applying for internships for the summer, which I'm already way late on. I hate writing cover letters, I spent all day monday stewing over the stupid things. My apartment is running out of glasses, I think we break 1 or 2 a day. I knocked over an empty wine bottle yesterday and amazingly caught it with my foot. In the process, though, i hit a glass with my pinky and shattered it on the spot. It didn't even fall. Yea, dunno.

Alright, anyone who reads this that will see Chip anytime soon, tell him I say hi.

P.S. Yea, sorry, this blog bored me too...:-)

Italy should not be this cold...

Sorry, I meant to update this sooner, but first of all, I've been really busy the last few days, and second of all, its been really cold (in the 20's at night, which is when i do these), so its hard to sit out on the terrace for a long time and write these things.

This past week, classes really got into full swing, and as a result, I have a lot of reading to do for them. My European Union class is getting more interesting every time I go to it, which is wonderful, considering the fact that I was falling asleep during the first class. I was assigned a group oral report thats due in a few weeks on Germany, so we'll see how that goes. Its gotta be 20 minutes long, but I have a feeling that I should be fine considering that my topic is the entire country of Germany and anything and everything about it.

My History of Modern Italy class is probably one of the more boring things I've experienced in the last 20 years. Luckily, as the class is 2 and a half hours long, we get a 10 minute break an hour and 15 minutes into it. During this time, I've begun the ritual of leaving the school and grabbing an espresso to get me through the second half of the class...

My Food and Culture class is great. My instructor is a professional chef that has owned her own restaurant for around 20 years. The first week we made crepes, and last week we took a trip to the largest fresh food market in Florence so she could show us around and explain a bunch of food stuff to us. I really like the market; there's a lot going on and there' all kinds of really interesting foods. The only downside is that a bunch of the vendors like to overcharge Americans.

Italian language class is exactly that...italian language class. I know a lot of the people in that class, and there's a lot of active participation, so its a good time.

In other news, I've been trying not to eat out as much. The last week and a half or so has been mostly fresh bread, olive oil, blood oranges, salad, and different variations of pasta with tomato sauce. When I do eat out, though, I've been going to this place called Dante that is a Florence student's godsend. Its a nice restaurant, but the best part is that students drink all they want for free, plus what seems like an additional 15-20% off the bill. I'm still not exactly positive what they are or aren't charging me for, all I know is its great. I went there with a party of 12 a few days ago. Everyone got a meal, plus 6 or 7 bottles of wine for the table, a bunch of bottles of water for the table (no restaurants in Florence serve tap water), a round of lemoncello for the entire table, a few cappuccinos and espressos, and somehow it came out to 8 euros per person...incredible i tell you.

Other than that, I went to Pisa last Wednesday. Its a really easy trip, about an hour train from Florence. The city was pretty nice, definitely a lot greener than Florence, but also a lot smaller. Now check out some pictures. 

This is one of the main streets in Pisa; nothing all that exciting. It lets you see what the city looks like though.

A Keith Haring mural on the side of a church in Pisa. Looks pretty cool to me...I feel like I've seen it before.

It turned out to be really great weather the day we went, so that was nice. This is the Arno river cutting through Pisa. The same river cuts through Florence, just pretty far east from here.

You wouldn't believe the amount of people doing that cheesy *I'm holding up the tower* photo. I found that the asian tourists especially like holding up the tower in pictures. Besides that, the tower was nice. The whole area surrounding the tower and the church next to it was really nice; very green grass.

Check it out, its some nice dome thing. There were all kinds of signs saying to stay off the grass, but we made it on for the next picture...

You wish you could jump that high. Don't worry, you're not alone, everyone else is jealous too. Thats me and my friends Kat and Danielle. Yes, I was traveling with 4 ladies.

The sky started getting really nasty in the evening, so I snapped this and I think we got the hell outta there and back to the train right after this.

I did manage to catch a pretty cool sunset walking back over the river. Looks like the world's on fire.

This last picture is from a trip I took yesterday to Lucca, a city west of Florence, pretty close to the Mediterranean. The entire place was surrounded by these really old city walls. This picture is from on top of the wall, looking outside of the city. I didn't take many pictures of Lucca and none of my friends posted theirs yet, so this is the best I got. And sorry to go back to that Dante restaurant, but to give some perspective, I spent 17 euros in Lucca at some crappy little restaurant for a personal pizza, a little pasta dish and water...

No class again tomorrow. I keep forgetting that I still don't have an internship for the summer, so I think I may work on that a bit. Other than that, I finally got my Florence museum pass, so I may drop by one of the museums tomorrow.

Alright, I'm cold.

Happy, Mike?

Call Me Giovanni da Verrazzano

Yesterday, as I didn't have any classes, I took the liberty of sleeping in. For me this means sleeping until it's appropriate to eat lunch; breakfast isn't for me. I had heard from friends about the San Ambrosio market, which i had curiously never seen or nor been to, as it it's literally 100 feet from my front door (I did not know this at the time). This market being one of the biggest and best open air fresh food markets in Firenze, I decided to check it out and see if I could gather some good stuff for lunch. So I walked out of my house and around the corner right in front of my door and whaddya know, there it is. Walking though this place, I saw every kind of fruit, vegetable, meat, cheese, bread...whatever you could possibly want. Long story short, I ended up getting an avocado and a big hunk of fresh, hot, amazing focaccia bread. But now I know where to go to get great food from now on. They also had this cool mini restaurant there enclosed in glass with booths around the outside. To get into a booth, you open the outside glass like a door and slide right into the booth. Every booth had its own door, you never actually walk into a restaurant. Think of it almost like a restaurant of phone booths maybe? Well, I thought it was cool...

After lunch, I decided to spend the rest of the day exploring a bunch of the places in the city I hadn't seen. And by the way, the weather was amazing. I wish it were like that every day. I was walking around the city non stop for probably 3 hours, it was great though.

These first two pictures are taken from one of the bridges that go over the Arno River, looking west out of the city and into the hills. That direction was the way I went walking. I found this really nice park on the river bank. Some lady's huge great dane starting running away from her in the park, so i grabbed the dog's leash. Then she started saying something in Italian to me over and over again which I can only guess meant "it's ok, it's ok" or maybe "let go of my dog". In any case, I dropped the leash.

After walking down the river bank for a while, i crossed the river and starting making my way back the other side. I had heard about Piazzale Michelangelo, a big hill that lets you see the whole city of Florence, and it just so happens that on my walk, I came right up to the steps of the hill. How convenient. In case you care, I live right next to the church with the steeple right in the middle of this next picture (Basilica Santa Croce).

Looking west at the Arno River and the hills beyond it:

This is looking east at the Ponte Vecchio, Il Duomo and much of the city:

Here you can see almost all of the city, with the Duomo(the big dome...) on the left and Santa Croce on the right

Here's two shots of the Ponte Vecchio, the really old bridge with all kinds of cool shops on it. It is about a thousand years old, but i think it was ruined and reconstructed again in like 1300. Still old. Its really nice at night; I'll have to get some sunset pictures at some point. 

Then I made my way over to the Duomo and I got some better pictures of it this time. Its funny how it just sort of appears out of nowhere when you're walking towards it. The streets are so narrow that you can't really see anything that isn't right next to you, no matter how tall it is.

I still haven't made it inside the Duomo, but that'll come soon. I'm going to Pisa tomorrow, so I'll let you know how that goes. Thats all for now. Night!

After what seemed like a good week of straight rain, we finally got some sun today! And looking at the weather, it looks like sun's gunna be the norm for the next week.

On account of the good weather, me and a few friends decided to walk around the city a bit today. Lucky for us, there was a cool bazaar taking place in the piazza right next to our apt. They had a bunch of meats, cheeses, wines, and all kinds of marmalades and what not. Check it out.

This is Piazza Santa Croce, and when you turn around, you're greeted with one hell of a church. From my experience so far, this is the hot spot for all the asian tourists. EVERY time I turn off of my street and into the piazza, there is literally a stampede of asian tourists in some travel group on their way to something. I've yet to figure out where they're heading because I don't see them in hoards like this other places in the city. That may be some of them in the top left corner of the next picture...I'm gunna try to figure it out and get back to you. Priority #1.

We ended up buying some proscuitto, salami and these biscotti with huge chunks of dark chocolate. I wish i had a picture of the salami; its all moldy on the outside and it looks pretty awful, but it tastes great.

After that, we walked another 5 minutes to Piazza della Signoria, where they have the Palazzo Vecchio and a whole bunch of great sculptures.

After hanging out here for a bit waiting for one of our friends to meet us, we decided to go to this pizzeria we went to once that we liked, it's Dante themed. After a while of searching and finally deciding we didn' remember where it was, we just sorta hung out by the Duomo for a bit and eventually grabbed lunch at some crappy pizzeria. Oh well, the Duomo was nice today though.

This doesn't really do Duomo justice. There's a lot more to it than this. I couldn't even get the top of it in the shot, the picture probably only shows 1/2 of the height of it. I'll get some more pictures of it some time soon, its pretty cool.

That was about it for today. I didn't even really go out tonight. I just played cards...still fun though. I think this week or next weekend I'm gunna head to Pisa with a few friends.

In other news, I can't remember if i mentioned it in my other post, but i ate something for lunch the other day from a street vendor/cart thing and I had no idea what it was. Me and my Turkish friend saw a bunch of people crowded around the cart so we just went up and ordered 2 of whatever it was. I learned later that it was lampredotto, which, after our little old lady wine shop friend translated for me, I found out was another name for tripe (intestine). It was good, and a fairly interesting, but I thought it might've been something weirder than that, like brains...o well.

Alrighty, more pictures to follow in the next few days. Hope you're enjoying your weekend.

My first blog ever..check out my apartment!

Hey everyone,

So, I didn't think I would ever do it, but i've decided to try out this blog thing now because, hey, if there's any time i might have something interesting to say and show, it'll probably be now.

At this point, I've been in Florence for just about a week and I've been able to walk around and just scope everything out. Just during the first few days, I became friendly with a bunch of students from my school, and as just about everyone is an international student (mostly American), we all speak English. When I say we became friendly, I'm talking about staying up till 5 am either at a bar, a club, or just sitting around someone's apartment drinking wine every freakin night. I think I'm gunna settle it down a bit with the start of classes; I do only have classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays though, so we'll see ;-). Sorry mom, but if it makes you feel better, i stayed in tonight to start writing this and get a good night sleep for class tomorrow!

Alright, so I thought I'd put up a few pictures of my apartment. I'm living with 4 other guys in a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom place. Its sorta small, but it's really close to everything, so its very convenient. A bunch of the people I know have nicer places, but they're all far away from all the good stuff.  These will be the only pictures for now, as I sorta forgot to take my camera out of my bag over the last week, so I haven't taken any pictures around the city yet.

Sorry for the weird order of the pictures, but I'm still figuring out how to do this and I can't seem to get the pictures to go where I want them. But anyway, this is looking off my terrace down to the restaurant below. Thats where I steal my wireless from :-)

 This is my little terrace thing. It's the only place where I really get strong internet, cause I've been stealing wireless from the restaurant below us.

Bathroom. Self explanatory. Shower...bidet. Just found out yesterday that those drying racks on the left are heated. They're hooked up to the hot water and the water runs through them. Clever.

This is my bedroom, which I share with another guy. Its fine I guess.

When it's too cold out, like right now at 1:22 am, i open the shutters in my room and sit right next to the window. I get a weaker signal, but its better than nothing and I'm not cold.

This is the kitchen. I cleaned up tonight before I started playing around with all this blogging stuff. It doesn't usually look this nice, but this is what you guys will see.

You can't tell from here, but the washing machine's inside is like the size of a basketball. And no one really noticed till yesterday, but we don't have an oven, which is sort of a bummer.

Alright, I'll try to come up with something a little more interesting next time. Maybe I'll actually take my camera outside.