London

Hi everyone. This past weekend I went to visit my friends in London. I had never been to London before, and I loved the city. It was similar to New York, which was a nice change of pace from Florence. During the day we mostly just walked around and shopped a little, but everything was so expensive. It was my friend Meg's birthday on Saturday so we went to dinner at an American diner and then went to some clubs. were lots of things we wanted to do (like go to a play, go on the London Eye) but we ran out of time. The weekend went by so fast, I wish I could have stayed longer and seen more of London.

Here are some pictures from the weekend.

Assisi

Two days ago I went on a school-sponsored trip to Assisi, which is a small town about 2 hours northeast of Florence. When we first got there we went to San Francesco's Basilica which was really cool and there were some amazing frescos inside the church. we learned about the history of St. Francesco and the meaning behind each painting/sculpture. After that, we all had time to explore Assisi on our own. The whole town is on a cliff so

my friends Maggie, Isaac and I decided to try to climb to the top of the town. It's easy to navigate because you just keep going uphill until you reach the top of the city, which is an old abandoned castle where you can look out on all of Assisi and other surrounding towns/farms.

This is a picture of San Francesco's Basilica as we started to climb up the city.

this is a picture of me that my roommate Maggie took as we were climbing up to the castle at the top of the city. this was about half-way up.

this is the castle at the top of the city. we didn't have time to go inside, but we sat outside for a while to enjoy the view.

This is the view from the castle. It was so beautiful, this picture doesn't even begin to capture it.

We saw this view as we were hiking down back to the base of the city, as the sun was beginning to set. I think the dome in the landscape is il duomo di Perugia.

first week

I've been in Florence almost a full week now, and it's starting to feel like home. Classes just started today, so until now I've mostly just been walking around and exploring the city. Here are some photos of what i've done/seen so far.

This was an amazing view of the alps from the plane when we were flying from Germany to Florence at sunrise.

This is a small street by campus with lots of shops and bakeries.

I took this yesterday when I walked along the Arno river at sunset. This was taken from the Ponte Vecchio, about a 15 minute walk from my apartment.

I took this picture of the Duomo at dusk because it looked like it was glowing.

I also moved into my apartment a few days ago. There are 4 of us in a 2 bedroom apartment. It's absolutely beautiful, and much bigger than I expected. We have a ton of space and a backyard (giardino) just to ourselves. We have a nice tuscan kitchen and really high ceilings. It's about a five minute walk from the studios and about 10-15 minutes to downtown (il centro). Here are some pictures of the apartment:

I'll try to post more pictures soon.

Hope everything is well back in the US - love you all