Week One Recap

I have been very busy, which is a good thing, but I haven't been able to update this until now! I have class Monday to Thursday for three hours each day. We have some site visits scattered throughout, and the second half of class usually involves something outside of the classroom.

Tuesday was my architecture class, which was really interesting. I learned that our apartment stands just outside of where a Roman coliseum once was. Also, it is right next to a fortress that was once a prison. It was cool to learn about the city that we have been roaming around for the past week, my goal now is to learn as much as I can in my short six weeks here. A huge part of the city was demolished at the end of the 19th century, so we learned how to distinguish the old from the new. One half of the city has evolved which the other half has been redesigned based upon the Roman model. There are five basic architectural styles:

1. Roman
2. Medieval
3. Renaissance
4. Baroque
5. New Classicism
6. Liberty

These "languages," as my professor eloquently calls them, date back from ancient times, all the way to 1938. As I said, half of class we are walking the city looking at these examples, so it's really crazy to see them right in front of your eyes, since the city is literally an evolution of architecture throughout history; you can see where buildings have been added and altered. For instance, the intersection of our street is an oval shape, so you can literally see how the coliseum has been formed into the residential area that stands there today. I didn't get a chance to take any pictures, since I was (obviously) listening very intently to all of this info... I'll get some up soon! After class, we made a trip to Vivoli, one of Florence's most famous and delicious gelato places... which happens to be literally around the corner from our apartment!

My marketing class yesterday was a site visit to the headquarters of a bottling company. It was pretty interesting, but not really interesting enough to post here. Although I can say that I did not know that so much thought and effort went into bottling items. Merchandising, merchandising, merchandising! Since I was kind of bored during the visit, here is a picture.

After class we rushed to the train station to go to Viareggio, a beach on the northern west coast and about an hour train ride. Curiously, the station does not offer any kind of schedule that you can take home with you, and there is not set cost for rides. Also, they rarely check tickets, so I'm going to be a cheap American and get away with a free ride as much as possible. These crazy Italians. We finally got to the beach, which was suprisingly dirty, but still beautiful. Looking at the water, you would guess Jersey shore. Then you turn around and see mountains. Gorgeous. This is the best i can do for right now, it was kind of overcast.

Last night all of the roommates made dinner and went to a local club called 21, which was really fun.

Today was architecture again, what we did was much of what I have previously explained. There is so much art and history at every glance so it's impossible to learn and see it all.





I just got back from "apertivo" and a movie: Angels and Demons. Really great, and even more great because I will be many of all the places in the film in just a few weeks. Speaking of, we figured out our schedule for the next 5 weeks, which will include Paris, Amsterdam, Venice, Cinque Terre, and a few more that I can't think of. Tomorrow is Pisa, followed by a pub crawl with all of the Palazzo students. Saturday is Siena and San Gimignano with the school as well.





Lastly, for your viewing pleasure:

Kristin and I in front of the Duomo. I still cannot get over the size of it. I will put more pictures up when we actually go and visit.

Also, here is a link to all of the pictures I haven taken so far. Hope it works!