Hello everyone! I’m back to share more about everything that I learned about in Florence!
Over the course of the month I spent in Italy, I really learned to put myself out of my comfort zone and do my best to experience everything that I could. At Pitt I always tried to maintain a routine to make sure I stayed on top of things. Obviously when I went to Florence everything changed. My sense of familiarity was thrown out the window and I had to adjust to a new apartment, new environment and a new group of people around me. However, even though I was a little nervous, I was also really excited. Although getting used to a new environment does take time, it was nice that I had other Pitt students around me when I had trouble. This made the transition to living in Italy a lot smoother.
I think there were some things in Italy that I absolutely loved and some things that I don’t think I would ever get used to.
I loved the amount of small cafes scattered all around the city. You could walk in and order a coffee, pastry for really cheap and everything was fresh and delicious! In fact, the overall quality of ingredient in Italy had me very impressed as I wasn’t disappointed with anything I ate. At the same time the portion sizes are smaller so the meals do cost more for the amount of food but it’s definitely healthier overall for you.
In addition, I loved being surrounded by architecture and history. I would walk out of my apartment, look left and be able to see the Duomo right next to me. In class, we would see old paintings and pictures of plazas and statues and I could walk 15 minutes and see almost the exact same thing today.
My favorite experience over the month was a day trip I took to Lucca. It’s a really small city close to Florence that had a great trail that surrounds the city. We rented bikes and rode around admiring the Tuscan countryside. The city had a very different feel compared to the tourist cities that we visited. It was much calmer and a needed change of pace for me. I would definitely recommend anyone visit it if you are given the chance.
I think one of the hardest things to get used to was the apartment. Compared to in the US, the apartments are way smaller. They had a washing machine in the kitchen and the stove used gas whereas back at home I had an electric stove. There was also no air conditioning in the apartment. It meant we saved a lot of energy but at the same time in the later half of May the apartment was hot almost the entire day. However, I am very grateful that we had a kitchen. I cooked a couple of simple dishes like cacio e pepe and carbonara which with the fresh ingredients that we bought at the local supermarket turned out really well!
After everything’s said and done, I can say with confidence I would do it all over again. Without a single part of what it was it wouldn’t have been another close to as amazing of an experience.