Author: David

Today we joined a group including two other Road Scholars and several students from Switzerland for a school-sponsored day trip to Arezzo in Tuscany.

We spent this afternoon with David’s second cousin David Shacter and his wife Melody, who are on their own tour of Italy and stopped for a couple days in Florence. Then it was on to our weekly happy hour to catch up with our fellow Road Scholars.

Today, we returned to the Pitti Palace to visit three more of its museums: the Royal Apartments, the Palatine Gallery, and the Fashion & Costume Museum.

This afternoon, we and another couple from our Road Scholar group traveled to the home of a local chef for a hands-on Italian cooking class. It was informative, entertaining, and SO much fun, and at the end we got to eat what we’d made!

After language class, lunch outdoors, and a visit to the supermarket, David went back to the school for a seminar about Tuscan bread, while Cheryl returned home to study and do laundry and ironing.

This morning we started our second week of language classes. My class played two games to practice the most common (but probably most difficult) Italian past tense, called passato prossimo. The afternoon brought heavy thunderstorms, but the skies cleared up enough for a surprise fireworks show at night.

This afternoon we took advantage of what’s supposed to be the last rain-free day of the next week to walk into an area of Florence that we hadn’t yet visited. We did our homework and studying with a view of the Florence skyline, and enjoyed yet another delicious dinner at a restaurant recommended in one of our guide books.

After starting the afternoon at our favorite gelateria, we visited the opulent Treasury of the Grand Dukes, the summer apartments of the Medicis, in the historic Pitti Palace, which is part of the Uffizi Galleries.

This afternoon, we plunged into the center of town for lunch and dessert at a famous gelateria, then visited the Bargello National Museum, which showcases the world’s most important collection of Italian Renaissance sculpture.

Today was a national holiday in Italy, and we took advantage of some badly needed downtime, along with a visit to the Bardini Garden, which offered beautiful views of Florence below.