Sylva's First Glances

I arrived in Florence gasping, and grasping the arm of the man sitting beside me, a man I did not know. I had been asleep, and woke up to the jarring sensation that the plane was going down. It was, in fact, going down (we were landing) but the plane was hesitant to stay on the ground, and after first contact it jumped up again, and sent all the passengers bouncing and jostling as it waggled to a stop. The poor Brit beside me had been astonished to be seized by the woman who had been drooling placidly only moments before, and at the time I mistook his startled look for further evidence that we were crash-landing. My heart was still pounding as I gathered my bags, but the warm, clear air that greeted me when I descended the stairs from the plane cast off some of the stress I’d been carrying from the day’s traveling. Siena and I had met Felicia in London and so we caught a cab from the airport together. Three people and 4 months of luggage for the fixed-rate price of 25 euros? Score! We were the last three in line, and lots of cabs were waiting, hoping for customers, and when they saw us all get into one cab, the other cab drivers exclaimed “Hai tutti le ragazze!” and “Tutti tre!” and ours replied “C’è la buona fortuna!”
I sat up front and gave directions, Via San Gallo 53 rosso. We arrived and checked in and met our housemate, Anna, and hailed a cab to head to the apartment where we met our hostmother Maria. . . . Sweetest. Woman. Alive. No, really. She’s amazing. The apartment is incredible; spacious and well furnished, nothing like the american schema for apartment. Maria took us around the neighborhood (zona stadio), helped us buy bus tickets, showed us our stop and which numbers to take, and even took Anna to get toiletries, and Siena and me to get stamps. Daniella, one of her daughters came home and was so enthusiastically welcoming, I then knew it would not be Harry Potter with the Dursleys. Unfortunately, the family is entirely too skilled with English, so we won’t drown in immersion, but they are wonderful about using Italian, even when it is somewhat challenging, to help us learn, and also English when we’re clearly too tired, or just really need to understand something well. We met the father and the older sister and had dinner, which was (Not just pasta!) an amazingly flavorful rice dish with meat and salad and more of the home made bread we’d had with tea earlier. It turns out she makes fresh home made bread every day. They engaged us in conversation, but also had a humorous word-play conversation which I caught some of, and they explained the rest after the laughter died down. “un lira di Dio.”

There you have my actual first, first impression of Florence.

Since then, I have continued to be amazed by the hospitality of our hosts; Maria woke us up the next morning when we would have otherwise been late, and she drove us yesterday to the train station to make sure we got the best and right travel tickets, and showed us the Esselungha grocery on the way. We went back to the grocery to get fixings for dinner at Grace and Laura’s. It was almost as packed as the nightbus home, aisles as narrow as the streets. I bought wine and bread, Anna and Leah got gnocchi and all the makings of a parmesan mushroom cream sauce. Siena covered a dessert of shortbread cakelets with poached pears and kiwi, and our hosts made salad and served lemon gelato with dessert. Not just eating, but cooking Italian!

And I think that’s the big idea! That we’re not here to run around and snap a few shots of the Duomo, that we actually have un indirezzo, we live in the city, and we will experience it as something more than tourists. In this city of history, we will be telling our story. In a place with so many layers, we will both observe and become part of the changes. Even watching out the bus window, one can see the layers form. The first day I saw a wall graffiti'd with ‘Israel è stato terrorista," then a few mornings later there was a layer of fresh gray paint, which then ran in the rain and became transparent by the afternoon ride, and was repainted the next day. . .I could write of so many more fantastic experiences, but I’ll spare you for now.

I want to see more of Florence.