la casa

Its interesting to learn about how people live in different parts of the world.  In Firenze, everyone lives in apartment buildings.  In fact, the first night we all had dinner together, the parents were marvelling at the thought of living in a house.  It is such a foreign concept that a family would have an entire living space all to themselves AND have their own yard, but to a lot of Americans, this is the norm!  Americans tend to have a lot of boundaries, we like our space, and we like to maintain our "bubble."  In Florence, this bubble doesn't exist to the same extent, people are much more open to letting other people in "their space."  The picture above is the building that I am living in, it is surprisingly modern given the setting.

If you click on the map, you'll see a purple dot towards the top, this is where I live... Piazza della Vittoria.  I'll come back to this map in a later blog, but just so you know... the purple line is the route I take to get to the downtown area (highlighted in blue).  I'd estimate that it is about a mile from my apartment to downtown. 

Anyway... back to our dinner conversation... Luciano and Alessandra agreed that most Florentine apartments are very small, and theirs is among the biggest they have been inside.  It is a beautiful apartment; really cool, intricate tile flooring, high ceilings, gorgeous pops of orange, red, and yellow, three bedrooms and one bathroom.  The kitchen is my favorite part (mom, you'll appreciate this):

Everything is red!  How great is that?!  On the far right there, that's the fridge (red, duh), in the middle... a red dishwasher!  There's another level of red cabinets above that you can't see in the picture.  Since space is limited, organization and storage is really important.  Everything in this apartment has it's place!  This is something that my Type A personality really appreciates... It ensures that everything is always very clean and tity!  I love it!!

This is the library in the livingroom.  This is probably only half the books in the entire library.  The family is very educated, as you can see... There are hundreds of books on various psychology and economic topics, travel books left over from past au pairs, kid's books, novels, and many, many more!

This photo was taken from the back porch.  Can you see the mountains in the way back?  So awesome... I loved being able to see the mountains in Seattle, so this makes me feel more at home.  Out of the picture, on the right hand side of the porch, is where the family's keeps their pantry. 

 



These last two pictures are of the piazza across the street... The kids like to play here after school sometimes.  There's always something going on in the piazza... People walking their dogs, moms out with their babies in strollers, young kids playing together, older kids skateboarding or lighting off fireworks. 

The whole neighborhood is something straight out of a movie... Very beautiful, quiet, and charming.  Its something you could really only appreciate if you see it for yourself.

b.