Blog

After language class and lunch, we joined a group of other students from the school and teacher Silvia B. for a guided walk through Piazzale Michelangelo and the Basilica di San Miniato al Monte.

Rain postponed our Road Scholar “City of Dante” walking tour, so instead our art & history guide Nicoletta toured us around the Palazzo Vecchio. An imposing, fortress-like structure built in the Middle Ages as the town hall of Florence, it was later used in the mid-1500s as a palace by Cosimo I de’ Medici and his family before they moved to the Pitti Palace some decades later.

This week’s Road Scholar theme is The Italian Renaissance. After language class and lunch at a famous market, we met back up with our classmates for a guided tour of the art and history inside the Basilica di Santa Croce, sometimes called the “Pantheon of the Artists” for all the famous painters, sculptors, authors and other luminaries who are buried within its walls.

After a very busy week, we were ready for a quiet day today. We slept late, enjoyed a leisurely breakfast (and a few espressi) at home, had lunch and did homework at the casual restaurant in the Bardini Garden, then went grocery shopping and cooked dinner.

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.