A beautiful Day in the hills of Florence

A beautiful day in the hills surrounding Firenze. Gorgeous weather. Everyone here thinks it's horribly hot and humid but not for those of us who live in Tokyo. We had our date with Ann who we met at Ognissanti church the other night. We met her at Garage Europa as we planned. I was really looking forward to our big florentine steak. We took the elevator in the garage to the third floor and got in her car-a very retro Citroen. They call it a due cavalli (two horses) in Italy. Very cool. It was our first trip in a car in Italy and to top it off, we get a really cool car. It was about a 40 minute ride up the northern hills of Florence. Spectacular scenery all the way up. We started to see Florence in the distance as we got higher and higher. It was in the middle of the day so the pictures aren't very good. We got to the restaurant. Ann has been going there for years and years so some of the staff knew her. We ordered steak, two orders of spinach, two orders of tuna,onion and bean salad and two orders of fries. I thought it was way too much food but we ate it all. The steak was thick, almost rare and totally delicious. I think it even beats Iowa's steaks. We had a nice meal and a nice chat. Ann, has a very interesting life having lived in Florence for six months every year since the 80s. We had a wonderful yogurt fruit pie and then coffee. Our best meal yet. We haven't eaten much meat here so it was nice to get some food on my bones. We paid our bill which was under 100 euro so it wasn't so bad and then headed down the hill. We stopped by an amazing hotel to see the view from there. I asked for a price list pretending that maybe I would like to stay there sometime. I often do that so I don't feel bad about looking around the hotel. It was amazing. Maybe we will go back up for dinner some time. We then went to a huge park on the way back to the garage. We just drove through it. HUGE. I noticed a nice pool as well. Maybe have to try that out this summer.
We got back to the garage parked the car and then had a little cool drink at a near by bar. Jonathan and I walked home. He was headed for the gym and I was going to go home to do my homework but then I noticed a poster for a concert which was to take place in about 45 minutes. It was the Drake University Concert Choir! Drake is in Des Moines only 40 minutes from my hometown. I decided to just wait on the steps and study until the concert started. Before I went in I looked at the poster again and realized I knew the conductor, Aimee Beckmann-Collier. She was getting her doctorate when I was in Iowa City. I knew her name very well when I saw it but I had to think a bit before I realized all we had done together. In 1987 I organized the Iowa Choral Symposium. Aimee was my main clinician. A small world.
The concert was FANTASTIC!!! I cried during almost the entire thing! It was truly maybe the best concert I've ever been to. She is an amazing conductor. Italian audiences are great. They yell, and moan and stand and applaud after many of the pieces. I loved the spirit tonight. It was in a beautiful, small church very near where Dante met his love, Beatrice. I talked to Aimee after the concert and she remembered me-at least she said she did anyway. As I was walking out the church and the entire choir was standing around in the street. I told them that they practically changed my life with their music. They were very appreciative. They are off to Austria tomorrow. They should have a beautiful train ride through the Alps. What a great day!

Jonathan, Ann and the Due Cavalli

our wonderful Florentine bisteca

Ann and Jonathan at the Hotel San Michele

Florence-if you look carefully you can see the Duomo

Me and Ann

The Drake Concert Choir conducted by Aimee Beckmann-Collier

I spent the day on my own walking around Florence. I actually didn't get very far because I found a park with trees!! I get excited when I see trees as there are so few in the historic section of this town. My goal today was to study italiano and that I did. I sat in the park on a rather uncomfortable cement bench with no back and studied for almost four hours. I missed Friday so I wanted to get caught up in the book. The park was full of people-groups of friends, married couples, neighbors, young students, little children, people meeting for dates. I noticed people didn't just pass through the park quickly headed for home. Some were there when I got there and were still there when I left four hours later. What looked like a family was sitting near me. They sat and talked nonstop for four hours. It was fun pausing from my studying to listen to their conversation very little of which I understood. It's exciting when I understand something I just learned. It's so strange that I'm so motivated to learn Italian. I do just enjoy the discipline but I don't really know where I'm going with it. What will I ever do with it? Do I even have to worry about that? Maybe I didn't think everything through before I came here. So strange. Who knows what will happen... Anyway, it made me happy that these people in the park were not in a rush to get anywhere. They weren't alone at home watching TV. They were doing what human beings were meant to do. Communicate with each other. Good for them.

St. Francis of Assis

April 24th, 2008
Our train was at 8:09 so we got up around 6:30. Everything is within a twenty minute walk in this town so we could easily walk to the station in 20 minutes. Two friends from my class joined us. Juliane and Priscila. Juliane is from Germany and Priscilla is from the states. They both are finishing degrees in fashion business. Jonathan and I walked to Juliane’s place to meet her there as she is on the way to the station and Priscilla met us at the Duomo because she didn’t know where Juliane’s apartment was. We were off to the very spiritual capital of Umbria, Assisi. St. Francis was born there. He was the son of a wealthy clothe merchant in 1182. He had big dreams of becoming a knight but he had a gradual religious awakening which led him to a completely different calling. At the church of San Damiano, he heard the voice of Jesus on the crucifix. “Francis, repair my church.”
From that moment on, he gave up everything he had. He walked the countryside, wearing simple robes and telling people about the virtues of poverty and love for all people. Many people were attracted to his lifestyle and he developed the first order of the Frati Minori which after his death became known as the Franciscans.
Needless, to say we were very excited to visit such a hotly place. I felt guilty for taking a train there. That’s too easy. I felt like we should crawl on our knees all the way to Assisi. Oh, well we decided to take the train. I needed to sip coffee on the way you know!
It was a pleasant trip through the hills and villages of Tuscany and Umbria. There is a sense of relief as we leave Florence because there is SPACE, SKY, TREES, NORMAL BUILDINGS. It was a little over two hours to Assisi. We arrived hungry so we had a little snack at the lovely train station. We weren’t sure how to get into town-didn’t even know the direction but as we left the train station and looked out into the distance we were stunned to see Assisi sitting majestically on a hill. It was a beautiful, sunny day with nothing but fields of wheat and poppies between us and the birthplace of St. Francesco. We were so excited we almost started running. It was a lovely 30-45 minute walk there.
The countryside truly was beautiful-just like imagined Italy to be. Fields of green as far as you could see. There was no one around. All the other tourists we assumed were on big tour busses. Which we found out was true as there were thousands of tourists there as we arrived.
Our first stop was the Basilica Di San Franceso. I thought it was beautiful but Jonathan could really feel the holiness there. He is very sensitive to those things. We lost him for a while as he was meditating near the tomb of St. Francis. We then walked around the town, looking at all the tourist shops, stopping by the Basilica of St. Chiara. St. Chiara (Clare) was a spiritual contemporary of St. Fancis and founded the Order of the Poor Ladies. The Bysantine cross that is said to have spoken to St. Francis is also there.
We also visited the Tempio di Minerva.
For lunch we went to a wonderful restaurant called La Pantolla. It was in our guidebook. It was very reasonable and delicious.
After lunch we walked up to the Rocca Maggiore which provided a wonderful view of the city and the countryside. So far we had only walked up hill so I was excited to walk back down the hill. We were thinking about visiting the nearby city Perugia but decided by the time we got back to the station there really wouldn’t be enough time. We walked back to the station. The next train wasn’t for over an hour so we walked around the area of the station a bit. There was an impressive church just behind the station. I got in trouble for taking a picture in it. We were on the train at 7:19 and got back to Florence a little before ten. A great trip. Juliane and Priscilla were great company. I think we had our best day so far in Italy.

waiting at Juliane's door


Juliane and Priscilla on the train

arriving in Assisi

our first view of Assis

getting closer

the Basillica of San Francesco

Juliane and me

we are almost there

the basillica

in front of the basillica

Europe is really into tortue museums

a view from Assisi

is he real?

Assisi

sorry Jonathan and Priscilla- you were out of focus

the beautiful countryside surrounding Assisi

an archery competition in the piazza

taking a little walk while waiting for the train back to Florence

Last night we did our second "night tour of the churches of Firenze" Two nights ago as we were walking across our piazza and we noticed the doors were open to Santa Croce. Since Jonathan still hasn't been in it we thought we would find out what was going on. We were directed to the side doors. We were promptly led into the church and joined a little tour group that was being conducted in English. A wonderful, kind older Italian man was our guide. What luck to get a detailed tour of the church was see ten times a day. We picked up a brochure they had there and realized there were going to be tours of churches for the rest of the week. Last night was the church Ognissanti, most famous for the fact that Amerigo Vespucci was a member. Again, we had a wonderful, spunky guide. This time an older woman of about 75-80. She was so excited about everything as she told the stories of the artwork that filled the church. Sometimes, she would look at a painting and say "There are just too many paintings, I don't know anything about this one!" We also met an American lady on our tour who has been living in Firenze for six months a year since 1961. After the tour she invited us to go to a small village of Fiosole (I think that is the name of it.) in the hills overlooking Firenze. We are going to have the famous Florintine beef steak. She is going to drive us there. Can't wait! We arranged to meet her next Tuesday at 12:30 at the Europa Garage Parking.

Then to make a very interesting evening more interesting we ran into a HUGE religious procession coming out of the il Duomo. We have no idea what it was all about. It seemed that all the important religious people were there as long as just members of the congregation. It took

half an hour for everyone to pass. We then got a beer at a club near my school and met a nice American proffessor. All in all, a lovely evening and one that is making us like our new town more and more.

Here is a little information about the church we visited:

The Church of Ognissanti, on the North bank of the Arno just to the West of the city centre, dates from 1249, and owes its origins to a group of Umiliati monks from Lombardy (North Italy) who set up Florence's first wool mills there, powered by water diverted from the Arno by a weir. Wool was to become the powerhouse of the first phase of Florence'c wealth.

Ognissanti became the parish church of several wealthy merchant families, including the Vespucci, one of whose members (Amerigo) gave his name to the Americas. Sandro Botecelli(1444 - 1510) and Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449 - 1494) were also members of the congregation, and the latter left behind one of his best "Last Suppers" in the convent (equals monastery) refectory.

In 1561 the Umiliati, now on the verge of suppression (this happened in 1571), vacated the premises and were replaced by Franciscan Spiritual Minors. The church was reconstructed in 1582, and again in 1748. During the eighteen hundreds there were two suppressions (1810 and 1866) and by 1923 the place was in use as a store and Carabinieri base (which it still partly is). More recently the Franciscans (who had regained possession earlier in the nineteen hundreds) handed over to the Benedictines for the next watch!

It's 5:45 pm Friday. I just woke up from a three hour nap. It was a late night last night so I needed to catch up on my sleep. I woke up this morning with all intentions of going to school. I got up late so I dashed to a little restaurant that has pastries set out. I also ordered an American coffee. I suppose it sounds bad that I order American coffee and not Italian coffee. Well, Italian coffee-espresso, machiato etc. is served in the smallest cup you have ever seen and on top of that it is only half full! It's literally a shot of coffee. Of course, I drink coffee partly to wake up but also to sit for a while and sip away at my large coffee. The only coffee you can do that with is American coffee. This is served in a bigger cup (still not big enough) It's only a fourth filled but it comes with hot water that you pour in yourself. I haven't figured out exactly why they can't just put the hot water in. Anyway, this morning I ordered my pastry and my coffee and went outside to their little area they have on the street to have my quick breakfast. My coffee never came so finally I went back to the counter and asked again. The bells of Santa Croce then began to ring and I realized it was 9 am. I was late for school. It was such a beautiful day I decided to take advantage of it and went to a little park about a 15 minute walk away and studied on my own all morning. It was so nice sitting in a park that actually has trees and watching the moms and dads and kids playing on the playgound equipment. The best thing about it was the fact that there are no tourists in this area. I really feel like I'm in Italy when I'm there. I missed everyone at school but I had a really good study session. Italian is NOT an easy language. I can't imagine that I'll ever be able to speak without out slowly thinking of all the grammar points. I guess, I thought that way about Japanese as well...we'll see. In the mean time I do enjoy studying it so that is what is important. I'll continue studying hard to learn to speak the language but I may never learn to drink the coffee.

This weekend we are planning a little trip to Assisi famous, of course, for being the home of
St. Francis. Again, another trip outside of Tuscany. We will see Tuscany on the way. We are going with a friend of ours from school, Juliana and possibly a young man from the Netherlands.

If we take the long way to school, we can see almost everything that is famous in Firenze. One beautiful, sunny morning I took pictures on the way to school.

Yes, we have a room with a view (just barely)

the bridge we come out on when we leave our piazza

the view across the bridge
looking back at the bridge

the famous ponte vecchio

piazza della signoria

the campanile

il duomo

il duomo (our school is just behind this)

the street of the school

arriving at school