First day of language school and apartment move-in

(This is part of our series of posts from our six-week Road Scholar Independent Living and Learning in Florence trip to Italy in Spring 2025. We have an index to all the posts from that trip here.)

This morning we managed to find our way from the hotel to the language school on Via dei Bardi. The narrow cobblestone streets are all lovely and each has its own personality. We’re starting to learn our way around.

We enjoyed our first 3 1/2 hours of language classes. Well, Cheryl enjoyed hers–a beginner’s “survival Italian” course specifically designed by Road Scholar. I’m taking a traditional course, and I was humbled after realizing that I needed to be in a less advanced class than the one I was assigned to based on my placement test: writing and listening/speaking are very different! Tomorrow should be a bit easier.

After class, the entire group went out to lunch with our program leaders. This is the dolci e gelati counter at Finisterrae, where we and our fellow students enjoyed a delicious lunch of salad and pizza, followed of course by gelato for dessert.

We had some downtime before we moved into our individual apartments in the afternoon, so we took a break to do our homework (yes, there’s homework!) on the steps of the Basilica di Santa Croce.

On our way back to the hotel, we walked past the Fountain of Neptune in the Piazza della Signoria in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. The fountain was commissioned by Cosimo I de’ Medici in 1559.

Finally, it was time to move in to our new homes! This was the first half of our group crammed in a van (with all our luggage) on the way from our hotel to our apartments.

Our apartment is beautiful! We’re on the first floor (which in Italy, like much of Europe, is the floor above ground level…so we only had to drag our luggage up one steep flight of stairs). We are in the Oltrarno, south of the river, and we look down on the Bardini Garden (Giardino Bardini), which climbs the hill between us and the river. This is our kitchen and dining area. We were excited to find out that it has air conditioning (after mid-May), a washer AND dryer combo (rare in Florence), and–wait for it–a dishwasher! The property manager checked us in and helped us get settled.

Our living area. We have a tiny refrigerator on the left side of that cabinet below the TV. That’s OK because we have to haul our groceries up the steep hill from the store down near the river, so we’ll be shopping frequently but in small quantities.

Nice bedroom with a king bed and a big ceiling fan. Not a lot of storage, but we made it work.

Nice bathroom with walk-in shower.

And the best part of our apartment: THE VIEW! That’s the Bardini Garden right below us, with the River Arno beyond it and the historic center of the city just past that. Our language school is right on the river, about a 7 minute walk from the apartment.

We can see the Duomo and the bell tower of the Palazzo Vecchio from our windows. We can also see three construction cranes and scaffolding for construction in the Giardino Bardini, but we’ll just ignore that. Also…THE DUOMO!

Our closet is narrow but tall. There’s a pole with a hook on the end, like the ones used in retail stores, to reach the top bar.

Road Scholar provides us with a kit di sopravvivenza (survival kit) of bread, fruit preserves, pasta and sauce, and biscotti. Tomorrow we go to the store to buy more groceries.

One of our classmates, Georgia, is in the apartment right next door to us (the rest are scattered throughout the historic center of Florence, but all within a 20 minute walk), so the three of us went out for a nice dinner after we got settled. Here I was trying to figure out the directions to get there from our neighborhood.

Cheryl and Georgia on the street in front of our apartment. It’s quite a steep hill that we have to walk down to get to the river. That’s not so bad, but unfortunately we also have to walk up it to get home. We’ll be working off the pasta and bread.

Dinner tonight was at La Buchetta, which turned out to be a good find. Their specialty is steak (like so many other Florentine restaurants)…

…but we were all in the mood for pasta. This was David’s dinner, “Gnocchi Angeli e Demoni” (Angels and Demons Gnocchi) – homemade gnocchi cooked with stracciatella cheese, finished with a touch of red spicy sauce and crispy pork cheek, aromatic herbs and edible flowers. Yum!

The holder in which our bill was delivered was in the form of a classic Italian gesture. 🤌 Tomorrow we have a lecture on that very subject!

It has been an intense and very busy last few days, compounded by jet lag, but we’re mostly over that and looking forward to getting settled into more of a routine and living as Florentines for the next few weeks.