Adventure Trek: Florence

I went to Florence with my English class. When I say it like that it sounds boring and commonplace. Well, as boring and commonplace and going to Florence sounds. I digress. I went to Florence with my English class called Traveler's Tales: An Education Abroad. To paint you a picture of what this class is about, the first day of class the professor announced he had no real idea what this class was about. Aside from the fact that it was about a new way of learning how to learn. He had me at "no real idea."

We've been talking about Florence for months. We've been reading books from Henry James' Portrait of a Lady to E.M. Forster's Room With a View, Mary McCarthy's The Stones of Florence and Venice Observed  to an early 20th Century guide to Florence. The anticipation alone was monumental.

Once in Florence I found myself in the middle of a Knowledge-Sandwich. Meet the bread:

Left: Lucia at Santa Croce. Right: Forbes in front of the Baptistry.

Forbes Morlock (right) is my professor. He's a combination of nice, smart and smartass with a dash of Gregory House thrown in for good measure. Lucia (left) is just all around nice and kind. Forbes took us to Florence, and while he knows quite a bit (biggest understatement of the century) it was Lucia who showed us Florence, for she is a native Florentine.

We went everywhere. Name the piazza, church, museum, bridge, gelateria, we pretty much hit them all.

We didn't spend the whole time together. Which was nice. Forbes is a big proponent of learning a city and then exploring on your own. Everyone's pace is different, and what better way to learn a city than at your own? We were sent on adventures ranging from lunch (when I had a sandwich made of the third stomach of the cow) to finding a neighborhood using a 19th Century map (not that much has changed). This is some of what I saw (I'll probably revisit this post and add more to it, I'll keep you posted):