Learning the Ropes

First full day over. I feel accomplished.

We started this morning with a roommate coffee date at a tiny little coffee shop across from Il Duomo. 

First Lesson Learned: If you order coffee in Italy, you are expected to drink it standing up by the register and not linger. There is a ridiculous tax for sitting in the cafe. Like, a 15 Euros per cup tax.

Erika, Bethany and I did not know this. So of course, when we paid 2.50 for our cappuccinos and sat down at a table, the cashier seemed pissed. We figured it was just because we're Americans and we ordered really clumsily. Wrong. It was because of that stupid tax, as we were later informed by Stan, the Dean of our college. 

Luckily, we escaped without having to pay the extra fee, but it was a good thing to learn for future reference.

After coffee, we met the rest of our cohorts on the steps of Il Duomo for free lunch and an apartment tour courtesy of Stan and his wife Deborah (who's in charge of the whole trip). We visited the 700 year old Palazzo dei Cerchi (Kent State's Florence campus) and looked at some of our classrooms before lunch at Osteria del Gatto e la Volpe, where I had the best chicken parmesan I've ever eaten in my life (so far), followed by a shot of espresso.

To walk off our fancy lunch, we visited the three other girls' apartments (all larger and nicer than ours, but ours is cozy and we're the only ones who have private bedrooms). We wandered around more of Florence and just appreciated the shops, courtyards, pigeons (fearless pigeons, might I add; one swooped down and cuffed me with its wing), fashion, Arno River, and just the feel of the city in general. We exchanged money at a tiny little closet of a bank and got gelato courtesy of Deb and Stan (caramel and leche; it ruined ice cream for me, I swear it is that good).

We ended the tour with a stop at Glenn and Kevin's down the street from us (we visited them yesterday) and a quick group tour of our humble little casa.

The rest of the evening was spent on roommate time: grocery shopping at the 99 cent store, buying a hair dryer, having a guy point at us and say "Americanas," and ordering dessert-to-go to eat back at the apartment (mine was some kind of delicious apple/plum/apricot/walnut tart).

We were also successful in avoiding being killed by any passing vehicles, because no car, bus, taxi, carriage, or vespa driver, nor any bicyclist will bat an eye or slow down a bit when they see you coming. 

Now we're recovering from the day (it was incredible, but just a tad overwhelming), bundled up in blankets back in our newly-stocked apartment, watching the temperature drop in this place. It's currently 19 degrees Celsius. Due to Italy's strict energy laws, apartments can't be heated more than eight hours a day, and we're several hours past shut down. It's going to be another cold night with an early start tomorrow, but at least it's a night in Florence.

Spring 2012 CCI Cohort on Ponte Vecchio!