The weather has been so weird here lately. We've had a bunch of thunderstorms that'll make the sky get really dark and it'll rain for five minutes, and then the sun will come out. So it was nice escaping this crazy weather for a bit of sunshine and blue sky in Florence. I left Thursday afternoon and got back Monday night. But I can't even adequately describe how weird it was going back. It was really weird getting over the fact that I was no longer living there, but I was a visitor...I kind of compared it to going back to Indiana last spring after transferring and seeing everyone again, but this time I didn't regret my decision to leave (but that moment of regret only lasted a day, until I got a fabulous phone call from my amazing roommates back in New York) and I didn't leave anyone behind. Only Florence. It hasn't really changed that much. Some scaffolding has come off and there are less cars, but otherwise the Duomo was right where I had left it. Nina had a field trip all day Friday so after meeting her for lunch I wandered around the city, but not before: buying a whole chunk of dried mango naturale (from the same guy!) at mercato centrale, getting the same "ciao, bella" from the sweater-vest-wearing old man who always stands outside his gelato store on Via Ghibellina, passing the wedding dress store and looking at their new displays for the season, smelling the pizza dough through il Gato e la Volpe's open kitchen door, and walking down Via Della Burella, recognizing the window ledge we used to put our computers on in order to steal internet. After I had finished the route I took every day, noticing a few new stores open here and the same graffiti there, I sat myself down in Piazza Signoria next to one of the statues under the arches and an older man in a suit reading the morning newspaper. It was at that moment that it had hit me: I was in Florence.
I wish I had kept a blog while studying there--I didn't try very hard to even keep a journal. I left Florence in December yearning for Christmas and wanting to get rid of the Italian nuisances that I couldn't deal with while living there: the fact that everything shuts down for a few hours in the afternoon, having to take the unreliable 25 bus every day to class, constantly getting stuck in Pisa in the middle of the night with no way to get back to Florence, the creepy Italian men that would surround you in the clubs, the strikes, the lack of salted bread. By the time I left I was sick of seeing small Italian towns that ended up looking the same in my mind and traveling to so many other countries only showed me what Italy didn't have. Of course my experience was amazing and I wouldn't take it back whatsoever, but I'll be the first one to admit that I came back to Westborough a little jaded. So going back rejuvenated me and made me realize how much I missed everything there, even little old Pisa (we always toasted it as theworstcityintheworld, so you can you imagine me missing the airport?). And I realized how many amazing adventures we had there, stories that I still vividly remember and sometimes wish I could relive (although sleeping in the Malpensa airport on Thanksgiving night not so much). This program and my time in Paris couldn't be any more different than my semester in Florence--I'm both grateful and sad about that.
But I should probably describe some more about what I actually did in Florence, instead of reminiscing about it. Instead of giving a minute by minute, day by day (I just got the Step by Step theme song stuck in my head), I'll describe it like this: we bought pesto and cheese and bread and dried strawberries at mercato centrale, ate gelato, picnicked amidst (and climbed) the ruins in Fiesole, had penne gato e la volpe, rode the carousel in Piazza della Repubblica, sat on the bridge, made sangria, went into the Baptistry and tried to recount all the Biblical stories on the ceiling, ate pastries from the Secret Bakery at two in the morning (although it wasn't as adventurous as last year, as we just went to the same secret bakery we found then), walked around the Duomo a few times, listened to a woman sing beautiful opera in the archway of Piazza della Repubblica, hiked up to San Miniato al Monte for a beautiful view of Florence, walked behind a Palm Sunday procession up to said church, ate even more gelato, listened to Gregorian chants in San Miniato al Monte, walked through a recycle-themed crafts market, traversed pretty much the entire Oltrarno, walked through a park I never knew existed, lounged on the banks of the Arno in the sunshine, and tried desperately to say "Si" instead of "Oui," but it never caught on until I was back in Paris.
I miss it. I want to go back. But at the same time, seeing the light show on the Eiffel Tower just as the bus was pulling into Porte Maillot, listening to every 90s tv show theme song we could think of on youtube in the salon between classes, getting quiche at "the yellow place" for lunch, and eating dinner with Beatrice and her grandkids tonight made me happy to be back (as well as the fact that she made her glorious brownie cake again...).
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