Florence

I finally spent a few days with Alessandro in Florence. Schoolwork took up a fair amount of time even during my visit. He has two large stacks of schoolbooks for his 10 subjects: Latin, philosophy, history, art history, Italian, French, English, math, physics and biology. School at the Liceo (high school) "Leonardo da Vinci" is six days a week and Alessandro studies hard as he tries to learn in a new language and a new culture. Alessandro took me to see his school - at the time, it was "occupied" by students, meaning that they were protesting new governmental changes in public schooling and they were preventing access to the school if the purpose was education.

Otherwise we walked around town a lot. The Duomo is within easy walking distance from Alessandro's home. We ate decent, simple Italian meals in out-of-the-way trattorie and got gelato a couple of times, despite the rain. I had fresh fig ice cream - yum! No museums, though. I'll probably feel more like playing tourist on my next visit. Hopefully it won't rain so much the next time.

Still, I did take a bunch of tourist pictures. I decided to put them in a Picasa album so as not to take up so much space in the blog.

When I came back home to Sweden, the house temperature had dropped to 6C. Much as I enjoy the wood stove, it doesn't heat very well if I'm not there to feed the fire.