Friday in Florence

Today was a day to stay in Florence for Mom and Aunt Clare. I had school, as usual, which was fantastic, as usual. I get so much satisfaction from this class! Here's a picture of my class: Marco, our teacher, Yumi, the japanese girl, Anna, the polish girl, and me.

One funny story from class today: Marco was helping us with the pronunciation of some word...can't remember what, but he did say it was a tongue twister. He then gave an example of a tongue twister in Italian. He asked us to each say a tongue twister in our native language (I chose 'she sells sea shells by the sea shore'). It was very cool to hear tongue twisters in Polish and in Japanese!

After class, I met mom and AC at the apartment, and then we headed to San Lorenzo for a little shopping at the open air market. I picked up another few necklaces very similar to my purple Murano glass necklace (which broke last week) as well as a linen skirt, which I changed into right there on the street. It's way too hot for anything heavy!

Then we wandered down to the Santa Croce district to have gelato at Vivoli, which is considered by many to be one of the best gelaterias in Florence. As you can see, we had no problem finishing our gelato!

We hopped on the bus after that to head up to San Miniato al Monte. I had heard about the Benedictine monks who sing Gregorian chant every afternoon and I was eager to hear it. We got there just in time...around 5:15. The singing began at 5:30. We looked around the church a little, which was VERY beautiful and VERY old, built around 1027. Then we sat down to listen to the monks. It wasn't long before we realized that it wasn't just chanting - we were attending mass in Latin. So, although we had planned to spend only a little time there, of course we could not leave during mass, so we stayed until the end, which was really wonderful.

Mom and Aunt Clare in the courtyard in front of San Miniato

A nice walk back down the mountain, and then dinner at Trattoria dell Angiolo, which is one of the most wonderful meals I've had yet, and that's saying a lot! We started with grilled vegetables for Aunt Clare and Pecorino with Etruscan sauce (which was honey). Then Aunt Clare had tagliatelli with Porcini mushrooms, mom had gnocchi with pesto, and I had tagliatelli in lemon cream sauce. Absolutely fantastic! The waiter recommended tiramisu for dessert, and it was one of the most wonderful tiramisus I've had....my first one here on this trip. Thank goodness we had to walk a little to get home, because we were absolutely stuffed full.

My cheese and Aunt Clare's vegetables tonight.

I know that these posts are full of superlatives, but I just can't say enough about how wonderful everything is here and how happy I am. Even though we're dying from the heat, we're all dreading the end of this trip because we're having such a good time here.

The view while crossing the Arno river this evening

For Thea: a very sweet pug on the bus on the way to San Miniato