Exhausted

I had the best few days as one of my closest friends came to visit for a long weekend. I have lots of pictures to share, but I am so exhausted from running around & this nasty little bug we both picked up.

I'm spending this extraordinarily hot day recouping from the weekend & catching up on all the boring stuff I've been putting off like laundry and applying for grants.

The above picture is from our Sunday trip to Lucca, and was made with the Rhonna Designs App. I'm still trying to get the hang of it, but it does make for fun pictures.

Mastering Gelato

I'm doing my best to try every flavor of gelato Florence has to offer. With the weather reaching well over 90 degrees every single day, stopping at a gelateria on the way home makes the heat a little less deadly.

Despite being a diehard chocolate fan, I think my favorite flavor so far is lemon-sage. It's the right combination of tart & savory. Pistachio comes in second much to my surprise.

My instructor at school let us in on the secret to great gelato. You need to get it from a place that keeps the gelato covered. The places that have giant mountains of gelato don't make it themselves. The ones that keep it in covered tubs are the truly outstanding ones. I tried both types, and the difference is really easy to see (taste?).

Don't worry, I'll keep trying more flavors. If I remember anything from my math classes in college it's that a larger sample size means more accurate results.

Io abito...

One of the hardest things to plan for this trip was where to live. I knew that I'd have a few guests coming to visit me so that automatically ruled out the dorms (also, at age 32 the thought of dorm life again gives me chills). I also knew that I had a pretty set budget and Florence is sort of crazy expensive when it comes to real estate.

My first stop was Sabbatical.Com because I figured it would be a pretty safe site. However, I didn't have much luck. It seemed like everything was rented out, and the prices were at the upper end of my price range. There also weren't a lot of reviews of the places, and I spend enough time on the internet to be wary of anything that looks too good without reviews supporting it.

That brought me to Airbnb which is a vacation home rental site that is established enough to have a good pool of places to choose from with enough reviews to make me feel comfortable. It took me forever to pick a place that I wanted for my stay here. Not because there were too few, but too many! There were so many gorgeous houses and apartments, it really came down to what I was looking for in a place. Did I want to be in the countryside with my own little house overlooking the wineries (yes!), but did I want a 35 minute bus ride everyday on Florence's notoriously late public transportation system (no). Did I want to be in the center of everything so it was easy to get around (yes). But did I want to pay $2500 a month for that convenience (definitely not).

So after much searching, I found the place I knew I really wanted. It was just out of my price range, but I wrote the owners hoping for a deal because of two things: 1. that I would be considered a long term rental since AirBnB also places short stays and 2. I would be in Florence, a notoriously quiet month for locals as many Italians go on vacation for the entire month. My gamble paid off, and the owners gave me a really fair deal for a really wonderful place.

How wonderful? Well, I sort of live in a palace. How cool is that? It's a recently renovated palace just off of S. Spirito, a street that I really liked the first time I visited Florence a few years ago. It's full of small cafes & coffee bars. I'm just outside the center of the city which means that I'm far enough away all the tourist activities that I don't have to deal with loud, crowded streets or pay $5 for a bottle of water. I'm also close enough that I have about a 10 minute walk to school and a 15 minute walk to the Ponte Vecchio for days that I want to do tourist things. It's also right in what I think is the antique district because there are tons of antique furniture stores and furniture repair shops in the area. Last night as I was walking home from class I also noticed a few artist studios right on the corner with painters working with the doors wide open so I could peek inside. It's lovely.

All in all I'm really so thrilled with the choice of apartments in Florence. I used AirBnB to book my Russian apartment, and hope I'll have the same luck there.