This is my route from il appartamento to la scuola. It starts going downhill.

Turn on the first street to the right and more downhill.

Road curves sharply to the right and continues downhill.

After reaching the flat, if I turn right, I will be at the main school building but as I am in the extension classrooms, I had to keep walking and take the first left onto Piazza de’Mozzi, which looks towards Ponte alle Grazie.

Turn right just before the bridge and the school extension classrooms are the door by the crosswalk sign (white triangle with a person walking on a blue background). It takes less than 10 minutes even stopping to take photos.

We had an afternoon class wrapping up orientation to living in Italy in the main school building. Its interior staircase:

Luckily for me, the rooms we use are on the ground floor.

There are numerous optional activities usually held in the afternoon on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays and sometimes the weekends. They can be films, yoga, art classes and trips outside of Florence. Some people do more language classes but the optional activities are always conducted in Italian so are good for learning to listen to Italian.

I signed up for I segreti di Firenze passeggiata (the secrets of Florence walk). It’s gratis, free!

Between the morning and afternoon classes, I went looking for some things for the appartamento. I had gelato for lunch from Il Procopio: cioccolato and ricotta with honey and walnuts. The cioccolato, not fondente, was very good. The ricotta was a mild flavour and I noticed the honey more. And the walnuts are healthy for you. They have the smallest “piccolo” but it’s also the cheapest at 2.50 euros.

I needed to buy the citronella mosquito repellants like those which were at Peruzzi Residenza. Those rooms were mosquito free so I hope they will put a stop to the buzzing which woke me up in the middle of the night. Nothing worse to promote sleep than slapping yourself in the head trying to kill mosquitoes. I walked a lot looking into various hardware stores but eventually found them at the grocery store.

I cooked my first real dinner after almost four weeks here. Up to this point I had only made salads, tagliere (charcuterie) or sandwiches—and for good reasons since I did not need a bigger meal.