Cobblestone Streets of Firenze

Today was orientation day. I headed over to school in the morning, filled out information for my permit of stay with the police (basically a way to get money from students living in Italy), sat through presentations on life at SACI, presentations on how to be safe, etc. Boring but informative. That's the way they always are, right?

In the afternoon, SACI students split up into two groups because there are 138 of us studying here. We toured the SACI facilities, local markets, and some Florentine monuments. Below is a picture of the Basilica di Santa Maria Novella, which is about a block or two from our apartment.

After our tour, my roommates and I headed out to explore Florence! You know you're in Italy when you see this whenever you look down a street:

We also came across chalk artists recreating famous paintings. The artist below was drawing in the street with pastels, but most artists use street chalk. It was crazy to see how close to the original these artists got.

Of course, we also visited the Ponte Vecchio. We ended up walking along the Arno for over an hour, acting like tourists and taking a million pictures.

It gets dark pretty early here, so we waited for the sun to go down. The Ponte Vecchio at night is one of the prettiest things I have ever seen. The picture below does it no justice (especially since it was taken with my i-Phone) but I will go back plenty more to take pictures with my actual camera. But first, I want to familiarize myself with the city so I'm comfortable walking around. It's a maze over here!

After our quick walk and gelato run, we headed over to SACI for a welcome dinner party where we were served lasagna and ravioli. Mmmm! We ended up leaving after half an hour because we thought it would be more eventful. Instead, we went grocery shopping (which is conveniently right next door to our apartment). We ended up craving pizza after we both Skyped home, so we ended up going back to the Mercato Centrale Firenze. There, we had the best Margherita pizza I have ever had. I have a feeling the workers will get to know us there. 

I'm still jet lagged so it's ciao for now!