Friday afternoon

....and school is finished for the week! Marco returns on Monday, and I'll be very glad to see him again. Our "substitute" teacher was fine, but Marco is such an amazing teacher that everyone else pales in comparison.

Yesterday was an exciting day for a couple of reasons:

First of all, I purchased a membership entitled "Amici degli Uffizi", which is basically a donation to the foundation which supports the state-owned art museums in Florence. With this donation, I received a card which gives me free admission to all those museums. This includes the Uffizi, the Accademia, Palazzo Pitti and all of its many sub-museums, Boboli garden, the Medici Chapel, etc. etc. This enables me to enjoy these museums at my leisure, without making reservations or standing in long lines waiting to enter. It also allows me to spend as little or as much time as I like, without worrying about trying to see everything, since I can always come back. Yesterday, for example, I spent 90 minutes in the Uffizi, most of it in the Botticelli room. I saw about 10% of the museum, but I could go back today, tomorrow, Sunday, etc. etc. I think this is probably one of the best purchases I could make!

Following my afternoon at the Uffizi, I went back to school for the afternoon excursion. Today it was a guided walk to the other side of the river, known as the "Oltr'Arno". Although I had walked over there numerous times before, I had never done so with a native Florentine, and what a difference that made! Christina told us all about the history of the city, and the importance of the river to the city, and the history of the expansion across the river. In addition, the other side of the river has much of the artisan work that used to exist in Florence proper prior to the flood of 1966, when thousands of artisans were destroyed in one night as the river washed away all of the tools of their trade. Today, across the river, you can still see, for example, shoes being made by hand, with apprentices learning the trade from the master.

Afterwards, I met many of my classmates for a beer near Santa Croce. There's a very interesting phenomenon here: many bars put out a buffet spread during the cocktail hour, between 7 and 9. If you buy a drink, you can help yourself to as much food as you like. So we each had one drink: a beer or glass of wine and plates full of food. I don't know how the bars make money on this, since the drinks were not priced very high and the food was plentiful. It's a good thing to know about if you're trying to save a little money!

OK, off to the museum of the afternoon...which shall it be?