Florence in the winter

The 1st of November is a bank holiday in Italy - Ogni Santi, All Saints Day. (yes, lots of hilarious jokes were made by me and Erika to the effect that this is the day that Italy celebrates the rise of all-girl British pop bands). As we usually work Saturdays, we made the most of our 1 proper weekend by going to Florence to visit Rob, our friend from the CELTA course who's now teaching there.

Florence is gorgeous and much smaller, calmer and quieter than Rome. Very pretty and a bit easier to cope with. Also, it's completely integral to Dante's writing, which makes it really cool. I last went there for a day trip when I was 19 years old and au-pairing for the Bini family in Castiglioncello, so it was interesting to compare my impressions now with my impressions then.

We had a really excellent time, stayed in a posh hostel (Erika and I splashed out on a twin room with an en-suite and terrace which was pretty much luxury compared with our apartment (which, incidentally, is FREEZING: it's finally got cold here, and the centrally-controlled condominium heating hasn't yet been turned on. Oh dear.)


Aside from this trip, things have been pretty cool - I love the fact that I'm now only working 5 days a week, plus I have all my mornings free (except saturdays, weirdly). I feel like I have a really manageable timetable, finally, and I'm still enjoying the teaching despite how exhausting it is (and my dodgy discipline problems with the young teenagers).
This weekend I'm going for a Thai meal to celebrate my birthday - I'm looking forward to eating something different, but my Italian friends have already started complaining ("Why Thailandese? when there are so many good Italian restaurants"). I've never met people so xenophobic about food before. Anyway, it's all good.