And the Classes Begin!

Sunday was a day of rest in preparation for the upcoming school week.

Megan and I decided to go out shopping to see if we could find any good deals. Every store in Florence has saldis (sales) that start in the beginning of January. Our shopping excursion turned into another journey around the city and we ended up stumbling upon the Synagogue.

The building is like none other in Florence. The palm trees almost make it feel like a completely different country.

Later that night we decided to go up to the platform to watch the sunset over Florence. We left a little late to catch the entire sunset but it was beautiful nonetheless.

None of my pictures turned out very well... this is one of the better ones.

Monday hardly felt like the first day of classes. I only had one class from 2:15 to 4:00 and we went on a tour of the Church of San Lorenzo and Palazzo Medici.

The Church of San Lorenzo is the location of Cosimo Medici's tomb. It is located under the dome in the center of the church. Pictures inside the church weren't allowed.

The front of the church was never finished since the 'architect,' Brunelleschi, died before he finished it.

The parts that were finished were quite impressive.

We also went to Palazzo Medici. Palazzo = palace. The Palazzo is now used as a museum and I would write about what all it contained but everything was in Italian, so sorry Charlie. My class went to the Chapel of the Magi (Cosimo Medici's personal chapel) which was the only original room in the palazzo. Some of the rooms had been restored to mimic what was actually there but were done rather poorly. Flash wasn't allowed so the picture quality isn't good. My apologies!

This was the bedroom restoration. The restoration of the rooms in Villa La Petraia were much more impressive.

I'm not sure what this room was originally but people were getting it ready for an event taking place later in the day. 

The courtyard in the center of the palazzo.

 One of the side yards.

After class I decided to try out my cooking skills again. The plan was to make pasta alla vodka but we didn't have any vodka so I made my own version (pasta alla hannah) and it was delish! I think I should start selling it by the jar. I subsituted vodka for red wine and eyeballed the rest of the recipe since all the measurements were in ounces. Overall another great day in Florence!

I have an early class tomorrow morning at 8:30 so off I go.

Ciao ciao,

Hannah