God it's HOT here!

First off, any of the pictures below can be enlarged just by clicking on them. Just wanted to get that out there for the technically impaired (mama). I think I could literally wring a bucket of sweat from my forehead after today. It's brutally hot in Florence (humid) by NY standards. Imagine NY weather but like, a suffocating humidity that's 100x worse. Still, it's not as harsh as Spain was last summer. I actually was able to find my bags within 5 minutes at the airport, passport check was quick. The taxi was easy to get and he knew what he was doing / where he was going. The hotel is OK. Statues of the Virgin Mary all over the place are freaking me out slightly, but I should be expecting to see lots more of her. We're cool, she told me so.

OK, first impressions of Italy:

1) People here drive CRAZILY. I almost got hit by at least 5 Vespas. Not joking. They go fast, and I assumed (since in Spain, Israel) they'd stop for pedestrians. Nope. They don't. Seriously, beware of them, especially at pedestrian crossings.

2) The food is good. Like really amazingly good. Especially the tomatoes. I have yet to get a gelato fix (can I be any more touristy?).

3) Shit is expensive, yo! I had to pay 6 Euro to climb the Duomo (central cathedral in Florence, more on this later) and 1.5 Euro for a big bottle of water. The latter is like, almost 3 bucks kids.

4) The indigenous folk are not as good looking as people say. Well, they're not ugly. But whoever came up with the Italian = beautiful stereotype had other things going on. Also, most of them don't really dress so well. Sure some of them do, but I saw tons wearing shorts/tank tops. Kinda wish I brought more of those with me now. This was another thing that made me feel awkward before I came here - but ended up being false.

5) It is LOADED with tourists. I'm sitting in my hotel now (post shower, read: post sweat-removal) and it just occurred to me how few natives I've seen. You can spot the foreigners easily with shorts and baseball caps. And of course, the ubiquitous cameras of which I admit I am a part of :-)

6) The people are really nice here though to tourists. Minus that one bitch who I bought the water from who gave me the most disgusted look when I went to take the water from the refrigerator myself (apparently they need to get it for you? I dunno). Then she goes 'It's SPARKLING water.' Umm, ok? I wanted to splash that sparkling water in her face. hahaha. In all fairness, the accent sounded weird. And she had blond hair. I think she was actually an American immigrant. That explains the nastiness. Hey, maybe she was from NY. With my feeble, shy Italian skills I ordered dinner to take to the hotel and the people there by the counter obv could tell I was a tourist, but they kept our little repartee going bc they saw I was trying. This was really cool, because I understood pretty much everything they said, and learned a new expression too ('portare via' means to 'take out' as in to take food to go). Noted.

I left the hotel almost as soon as my bags were dropped off, looked at the map and headed to Ponte Vecchio, supposedly a really old bridge that crosses the Arno (river around Florence), one of many bridges. But it was the only one the Nazis didn't destroy in WW II (pictures below). It was cool, lots of shops but I didn't buy anything. I walked to the duomo, climbed up it. I'll probably do this again with NYU, but I figured 'Eh, I'll do it again,' and I'm glad I did. The view was really amazing, and a great way to start my time here (more pictures below).

Then I walked home, saw some old italian men driving Vespas and almost crashing because their heads were turned around to look at some blond girl's ass. I laughed. I'll probably stay in tonight, because I don't know anyone here (yet) and I'm really tired anyhow. it's kind of annoying being here alone, flash backs of Spain. But I know this won't last long. Like one more day, haha. It's still really exciting to hear Italian being spoken all over. Cool, I like.

Good luck to all those MCAT kids finding out today, my prayers are with you!

David

Yours truly on the Duomo's tip top. The Asian girl who took my pic said '1, 2, 3, SAY CHEESE!!!!!!!!!' - she smiled also. A lot.

From the top of the Duomo, outside. Is this a church or a synagogue? You decide, because I couldn't.

The dome of the Duomo, from the inside. I think I overheard someone saying it depicts the 7 layers of hell (Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy)

Questo e' il duomo. This is the duomo, quite possibly the biggest chunk of Jesus I've ever come across. I could only get like 1/8 of it on film, by the way. It stretches all across.

The view of bella Firenze from the top of the Duomo

view from the Ponte Vecchio. The water is il fiume : l'Arno

I have/had absolutely no idea what the hell that tower was, but it looked important (?) so I snapped it :-)