Thursday, September 3, 2009

Living in Florence :: Our visit to the Florida everglades

When researching about what to do in Miami Beach, I saw that we could visit the Florida everglades. The hotel had a brochure on it and organized everything for us. We were picked up in front of the hotel at 8 am. The bus took us around to a couple of other hotels to pick up some more people. We arrived at the Florida everglades a couple of hours later and were quickly ushered to an airboat. We sprayed ourselves with mosquito-repellent after the tour guide warned us of mosquitoes.

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Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Living in Florence :: Going shopping in a mall

We woke up early before the sun streamed into our hotel window. I jumped up to take a photo of the sun rising, but I was a little late even though I did catch the sun coming up behind the billowy clouds above the ocean. I was happy to finally catch my first sunrise over the ocean. I couldn't wait to get the day started, so we went for a run along the beach. At 7:30 am, it was already warm and humid outside, but we persevered and ran down the coast to the ports. Fortunately the clouds provided us with some shade, but not much.

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Tuesday, September 1, 2009

We arrived at the airport in Florence as the sun was just coming up. Alessandro's babbo (dad) drove us through the dark and quiet streets of Florence to the airport. I was surprised that so few people were at the airport on a Tuesday morning because the last time I came to the airport, I had to wait almost an hour to check in. It took us only a few minutes to check in our bag and proceed to the gate.

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Sunday, August 30, 2009

I haven't been back to the US since I got married in October 2007. Alessandro and I decided last week to go there for a short vacation. After spending the entire month of August in Florence, we're finally taking our turn to get away. Staying here was almost like a vacation with fewer people around, quieter streets and less traffic, so now that more people are back now, we can finally take off.

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Thursday, August 27, 2009

Last night's game was the first I've been to this month. A few weeks ago, we did go watch the Fiorentina play against PSG for a partita amichevole (friendly soccer match). The only place at the the stadio (stadium) that I truly love to watch and experience the partita (game) is in Curva Fiesole where we even bought abbonamenti (season tickets) this year.

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Monday, August 24, 2009

Things have been rather calm in Florence these past couple of weeks with shops being closed and friends away on vacation. Besides my friends coming back to Florence, my other highlight this week was that my ortolano (greengrocer) finally reopened today after being closed for three weeks. I couldn't wait to go buy fresh fruit and vegetables from him. While he's been closed, I've been going to the three other ortolani in the area plus the mercato (market), but I haven't been as satisfied with what I purchased. I have realized in these three weeks just how great the quality of the fruit and vegetables that my local ortolano sells me.

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Wednesday, August 19, 2009

If I could've planned for my computer to stop working on me, it would not have been this week. All the service centers in and around Florence are closed, and some were already closed last week as well. The closest one to me will be open next Monday, but most of the others will be closed until the end of the month. I panicked Monday morning when my computer didn't start up. Fortunately, I have an extra computer that Alessandro uses so I could at least get on the Internet to get information about all the shops nearby. I couldn't work because all of my files were on my now broken computer although I could find most of them on my backup drive, which fortunately I just updated a couple of weeks ago.

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Saturday, August 15, 2009

Living in Florence :: Family lunch a day early

Last Sunday, my suoceri (in-laws) were out of town so we didn't have our family pranzo (lunch). I missed the ritual of it all: my suocero (father-in-law) coming to pick me up, our talk in the car, my suocera (mother-in-law) standing at the door to greet me, our pranzo together, and my pisolino (nap). Because tomorrow I'm going out with my suoceri for lunch to celebrate Ferragosto (mid-August holiday), we decided to have our family pranzo today. To start out my day, I decided to go for a walk up to to San Miniato al Monte for the past couple of days and finally dragged myself up the scale (stairs) to go have a quick visit.

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Thursday, August 13, 2009

Over lunch my girlfriend asked me if I still learned new words in Italian. Without hesitation, I said, "Absolutely!" She was concerned because she said that even after being here for 5 years, she didn't feel as if she was as fluent in Italian as she expected. We have both separately lived in France for a handful of years and both felt that learning French was much easier. We both felt that after living in France, we were fluent and didn't learn as many words every day. It seemed the typical expressions and words were used over and over again, which is a little atypical of Italian.

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Tuesday, August 11, 2009

When I started my blog in November 2004, I certainly didn't know what to expect and never imagined that I would write a thousand blog entries. If it wasn't for a friend of mine who asked me to consider starting a blog about my new life in Florence, I never would've thought about blogging. With my blog, I've had the opportunity to write about everything that pertains to my life in Florence, and have tried to keep away from making quick judgements and handing out stereotypes any time something didn't go my way.

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Monday, August 10, 2009

Living in Florence :: Feeling joyful and taking photos

Birthdays are happy days that I usually like to celebrate. Today is my mother's birthday and even though I'm happy that she was born, it still fills me with sadness now that she's no longer here. Last night, I had planned on going to Giardino di Boboli to walk around and write in one of my notebooks, but after getting out of the house late, I ended up walking around town and felt more like taking foto (photos) than writing.

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Saturday, August 8, 2009

This morning I finally went for a run, and was pleased that the air wasn't yet heavy and humid. Usually at 8:30 am, the summer heat has already blanketed the city and it's impossible for me to run. For a few weeks I haven't gone running because I felt too lethargic with the summer heat and humidity. But these past few days, the temperatures and humidity have both subsided and it's one of the most pleasant times I've experienced this summer.

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Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Some days I wish I could visit my beloved city more often. I'd walk to different piazze and just sit down to watch the events that go on. I love admiring the surrounding buildings and monuments to see if I observe any new features or other peculiarities that I hadn't noticed before. I try to walk down different streets once in a while so that I can discover something new. It's so easy to continually walk the same paths over and over in such a small city, but sometimes it's nice to change.

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Monday, August 3, 2009

The beginning of August is the beginning of the holiday season for most. For the last couple of months, everyone that I met up with has asked me the same question, "Dove vai per le ferie? Where are you going on vacation?" My response was always the same: "Rimango a Firenze. I'm staying in Florence." I never had to explain my decision to anyone. Anyone who lives in Florence knows what a dream the city is in August: less traffic and quieter streets. There are, of course, a few disadvantages like, more tourists, closed shops and restaurants, and many friends and acquaintances are away.

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Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Living in Florence :: New article by Cheryl Tucker on Florence from the Heart

I am happy to announce that Cheryl Tucker has just published a new article on Florence from the Heart. In her article, she writes about sitting in Piazza della Repubblica where so much happens at any time of the day. I have walked through it thousands of times to get to different parts of the city or to meet people, and I'm always amazed at all the goings-on: from marching bands and parades that traverse it to people meeting up and sitting around it. I admit that it was never my favorite piazza in Florence because I didn't find it as beautiful and inspiring as many of the other ones in town, but one day that all changed.

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