We are in Florence at last; the moving is done and the settling in has begun. A lot has happened in our lives since I last wrote on this blog and nearly all of it good; trivial but good nonetheless.
Sue and I came to offices of Milligan & Milligan on Via degli Alfani in Florence on January 24 to meet our new landlord and pick up the keys to the new apartment. (In fact we came up a few days earlier and dropped off a couple of bags of stuff – we can’t shake this need for so much stuff it seems – and then brought more bags up on the 24th.) Everything went as scheduled and by midday we had moved our stuff in to a wonderful one bedroom loft apartment on Via dei Servi, just a couple of blocks north of the Duomo. We even found one of the boxes we had shipped from Rutland awaiting us. Of course here it is early February and we’re still waiting for the other two. Postal systems everywhere are pretty much the same I guess.
Since we were still in transition, and the new apartment was a mess with all our stuff unpacked, we decided to return to our apartment in Siena for the night. We had our final dinner at Cantina in Piazza and were joined by Aimone and Alessandra. We had a grand time indeed, although try as he might Aimone could not persuade us to go for the “trippa” (tripe). They had become good friends. Sad to say Aimone sold the business to a Brunello vineyard from Montalcino who apparently plan to open an upscale restaurant in the same spot sometime in March or April.
The next day (Jan. 25) we packed up most of the rest of our stuff and headed for Florence. The plan is to return for one final time on Saturday to meet with Mario, settle accounts and pick up the last of our belongings (OK stuff) and clear out for good.
Although Aimone offered to help move our stuff to Florence we have opted to schlep everything ourselves – and this means several trips on the bus. It’s only about 75 minutes up and back and the views are petty spectacular (of course) so we don’t mind. Plus when we get to Florence we just go across the street and grab a taxi at the train station for the final leg. This is also a lot cheaper than hiring a transfer service to move all of our stuff from Siena to Florence. But just think about it: moving your home by bus. Wacky I know but it worked.
Anyway we spent our first night in our new apartment on Wednesday, January 25, since Susan’s first day of orientation was the following day, Thursday. Our apartment is inside an palazzo which has been turned into small offices and flats; our is on the second floor which we get to in one of those cool wrought iron mesh elevators right out of a Hitchcock film. (Check out the photos.) We have to go through three doors to get to our flat, the second one brings us to a small hallway filled with interesting statuary each piece well-lit and the entire place very tastefully decorated. we have a cozy living room, great bathroom and lots of space, and while we have more furniture than in our Siena apartment, and more comfortable furniture as well, we could use more storage space (of course). The kitchen seems small at first but has a great cook-top and stove and an adult-sized refrigerator, which we really appreciate. There is also a washing machine in the kitchen as well (fairly typical which takes about 24 horus for one cycle but Susan is a pro when it comes to this sort of thing and will figure it out. Our heating/cooling system consists of three Mitsubishi units scattered around the apartment, each with its own separate remote control and they al work very well. Our bedroom is on the loft level and is also where I have my computer work-station. Plenty of closet space here too so that’s appreciated. Our windows look out onto the tiny Piazza Brunnelschi – you would think the Florentines would have given him a somewhat bigger monument more centrally located considering what HE gave them.
We have a small group of college girls as neighbors in one flat whereas the others are all Italians (apparently). It is very quiet and peaceful here so far, although a couple of nights have been a bit noisy but not in our building that’s for sure.
Our first night we opted for just some fried rice and made the mistake of eating at a nearby Chinese restaurant (“Hong Kong”, Via dei Servi 35/r) where the fried rice was generally tasteless or covered in tomato sauce (your pick). Anyway we have found a great bar right across the street called the OK bar where the food is very good and the caffe and morning dolce are superb. It’s also a great place for an afternoon lunch (“pranzo”). Of course, as we have come to find out, Florence is in this respect, like Siena but more so: the dolci is everywhere and lots of it and the food is outstanding. Ya just have to pay attention. We lost our grip for a moment when we ate Chinese and won’t let it happen again.
We have also found a great little wine and food shop, right around the corner from our apartment, Osteria Ortolano (Via Degli Alfani 91(. They make plenty of great food fresh every day to take away (“da portare via”), as well as cheeses and homemade sauces; they also have a very large selection of wines. We also go to the nearby central market (“Mercato Central”), located near San Lorenzo, for our fresh vegetables and fruits as well as our meats. We will come to depend upon both places for many of our fresh staples. And there are numerous bread bakeries (“panificio) as well as bars and sweet shops (“pasticcerie”) that we won’t go hungry for good food.
And we bought ourselves a nice little moka coffeemaker and occasionally pick up some great dolci the night before so our breakfasts are set – and for you health nuts we do eat bananas and clementinas every morning along with juice as well.
Susan spent Thursday and Friday (26 and 27 January) in orientation and I worked on buying groceries etc., finding the central Mercato (central market) and trying to get my camera fixed. For those of you hanging in suspense my camera is, as I speak, in Turin, Italy being repaired. (Turin is home of the Winter Games for 2006 I might add although my camera is apparently playing no role in that feature.) That’s right at last I found a place a place within reasonable walking distance where I took my camera and they diagnosed it as a serious problem which they could not fix but, and here is the important part, they knew WHO could fix it and they would ship it off for me. Thursday PM I got a message on my phone from Turin saying yep they have it (well OK they didn’t use the word “Yep”) and I have to call them on Friday or Monday to check the status. In the meantime I bought a small Panasonic (Lumix DMC-FZ30 for those who need to know these things).
Our first week in Florence proved interesting on several levels. We have been spending most of our time either in school (Susan) or looking for places to buy, you got it, more stuff. That’s right sports fans, we found ourselves needing more stuff – or rather stuff in which to put the stuff we already have with us. Whew is this getting crazy or what.
Hunt for Stuff to put stuff in.
So on Sunday afternoon (29 January my Dad’s birthday) we thought man oh man isn’t this a great day for a bus trip out to some industrial wasteland amidst abandoned factories and hike a quarter of a mile to the HUGE IKEA store to mingle with 30,000 people in a place the size of the Astrodome, all looking for more stuff. And so we did.
We head over to the main train station (Santa Maria Novella – which is also pretty much the main bus terminal for local runs as well and pick up a bus pass for 20 euros (this gives us 25 trips on a local bus pretty much anywhere in the city). Susan picked up a bus schedule the other day and we know we can take the no. 29 or 30 bus to IKEA but now we have to figure out where exactly we can get the bus since there is so much construction going on and the regular terminal stop is not operative. Anyway after 15 minutes walking back and forth (“avanti e dietro” whichis actually “forth and back”) we find the temporary stop for bus no. 30. We get on board swipe our card twice and sit back to enjoy the scenery. Well, not quite. IKEA is located in a portion of the huge industrial section, which connects Florence with Prato and so we get an opportunity to see the grittier side of the city. And since many gypsies live in the abandoned buildings in the area near IKEA quite a large number of them get on and off as well. We found out later that many Chinese factories are in the same area and they operate 24 hours a day , 7 days a week so we also see many Asians as well. In fact upon our return we were wondering why we would see small groups of Asian men (primarily) just disappear down these long stretches of industrial steel and concrete when it seemed as if everything else was closed for the weekend.
Since we were clueless about exactly where to get off the bus we asked two young girls who, as it turned out were also getting off at IKEA and they said just get off with us, which we did. It was good that we asked too since the store is probably a 1/4 of a mile away from the bus stop and it is not self-evident from the bus. For those of you who have never had the opportunity to experience IKEA, and to experience eon a Sunday, by all means do so. Picture several Wal-Marts inside what appears to be an indoor soccer stadium filled with the population of a small city with everyone pretty much moving in the same direction – although not always – and you get the picture.
Well we justified the trip by actually finding some things we were looking for. We paid and headed back to the bus stop. As a footnote, however, we have to admit this is one of the best-run retail operations we have seen. And we do believe that they have, like Noah’s Ark, pretty two of everything there is in the world inside.
Later in the week we also find another place we had been looking for, a large electronics shop, Imperial, on Via Alemanni next to the train station. (We first discovered Imperial in Siena last year.) There we picked up two small speakers for the computer – these are an absolute necessity for us since we brought all of our music with us on the computer. That’s right, 26 days worth of music on one hard drive, with room to spare. Yeah! We also picked up an all-in-one printer/copier/scanner from Canon (PIXMA 150), which works like a charm.
The one thing we have not done yet is to buy a DVD player. I suspect probably because we don’t want to have to invest in the discs afterwards. Hopefully we will be able to find a good rental option here in the city before long. It’s just not a priority for us. As far as any other entertainment goes there is a theater called the Odeon near the Piazza della Reppublica which shows movies in their original language (the Italians are notorious for dubbing everything) and they have a discount card you can purchase which will allow us to see quite a few movies ant a seriously reduced rate. The shows listed for this month, which are on our list are: “Good night and good luck,” “fun with Dick and Jane” and “Jarhead.” We’ll keep you posted on how that turns out.
The Great Internet Access Saga.
One of the more challenging things for us has been to find high-speed, easy access to the internet. In Siena, as some may recall, we usually ended up going to the InterFastnet nearly every day and it was quite expensive as well as inconvenient. We pretty much stopped using Internet Train since it was extremely awkward to use our laptop and often we couldn’t even connect. We thought, hey now that we are in Florence surely we can get Wi-Fi or some kind of broadband access in our own home. Uh huh. We have been told it would be a small nightmare to try and get access wired into our apartment and certainly cost-prohibitive as well.
Interestingly, at our realtor’s office was a brochure by a company called Campus Telecom which would arrange for Wifi access in your own home. We said, “hey this sounds cool, let’s check it out.” So off we went and found their shop, actually a large internet access point, near the market at San Lorenzo. Come to find out this is a subscription-based service through Vodaphone, one of the major telecom players in Europe, to provide us with an WiFi card for our PZC slot in the computer and sign us up for so many months of service. This service is designed, mind you, mainly for college students, but more of that shortly. Anyway, we arranged we filled out an application and set up a day and time to return and pick up our reserved card – we were still living in Siena at the time actually.
So the day we returned to Florence for good, 25 January, we headed back to Campus Telecom to pick up the card and get the service going. When we arrived the owner (we think) was in hot and strained conversation with a couple of his female employees and we had to cool our heels for quite some time before anyone even acknowledged our existence. There was tension in the air as we sat down at last with Daniele (the owner we think) and one of his tech gurus who knew what he was doing, so we thought, but who was clearly feely a bit frustrated by having his boss there who was less savvy about these things. Anyway, the upshot was the software did not work for the Mac, and then it wasn’t the right version so they had to download the latest updated software off the internet, and on and on.
While we were waiting a young American girl came in to talk about her mobile phone bill – they also rent phones as well – and was tearfully explaining that her phone was turned off when a call was made using her number to her boyfriend’s phone which was also turned off and when she was in London and on and on and on. Daniel was comforting the girl and explaining that there was really little he could do about the bill (probably true) but her tears and sobbing continued unabated and naturally he started to waver and tell her he would see what he could do, and on and on, all the while stroking her hair like a concerned father figure and yet his voice betrayed (to us) a lack of real sincerity. But by then we were feeling pretty strongly against this whole place (except for the young man working on trying to get our computer in sync with the software).
But back to our computer. The new software didn’t work either so we agreed to return the following day to try once more to get the card to work in our computer. Or rather the software or get something to work doing something so we could access the internet! We didn’t really want to have anything to do with this business at this point – not surprisingly as notice was on the door of the shop printed in English: “English speaking person urgently needed.” Yeah right.
But our internet access problem remained. So we go home and just for a lark I turn on my wireless feature on the computer (“Airport” for the Apple folks) and lo and behold we have internet access from someone’s wieless network somewhere nearby. It’s not a great signal but it’s enough to send and receive email so we are set there until the network disappears. (We still have it as of 4 February). We also discover great high-speed internet access at a nearby Internet Train (I can use my existing car and registration for this too) so I sign up for their longest term package. Although I’m not a student they give me the student rate anyway and after a cost analysis we figure out that we are spending a lot less than we did in Siena (on a per minute basis) and also spending a lot less than if we had opted to go with the WiFi card from Vodaphone.
So we are settled in pretty much and enjoying being here. Although there are a few small problems we come to like our new apartment more with each passing day. And we really like our neighborhood and enjoy the energy you can fell here when you are out and about. They have a different way of doing things here it is true and so far we find ourselves enjoying pretty much all of those differences.
I’m still waiting for our first howling snowstorm.
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