a quick hello from Firenze
or, as us Westerners call it, Florence. I don't get it either.
I came to Florence under duress from multiple appalled parties who noticed its lack in my prospective Italy plans, and it would be fair to say I had a chip on my shoulder and looked forward to it least. (Oh, boy! Old statues! Museums with long lines! Whee!)
As it turns out, as it does so often in these cases, my cynicism was misplaced. Florence is rather extraordinary, and I'm glad to have come, shady people selling possibly black market goods on the street and all.
Prior to that was Cinque Terre, five remote beautiful villages along the coast. Tomorrow? Why, Venice of course!
In nine days I'll be home. Whee!
Okay, off to see gardens with statues in them or something. And I'm excited about this.
Also: cherry gelato? So good.
I came to Florence under duress from multiple appalled parties who noticed its lack in my prospective Italy plans, and it would be fair to say I had a chip on my shoulder and looked forward to it least. (Oh, boy! Old statues! Museums with long lines! Whee!)
As it turns out, as it does so often in these cases, my cynicism was misplaced. Florence is rather extraordinary, and I'm glad to have come, shady people selling possibly black market goods on the street and all.
Prior to that was Cinque Terre, five remote beautiful villages along the coast. Tomorrow? Why, Venice of course!
In nine days I'll be home. Whee!
Okay, off to see gardens with statues in them or something. And I'm excited about this.
Also: cherry gelato? So good.
posted by dd | 7:35 PM
1 Comments:
As for Firenze/Florence, I will note something almost certainly not of interest to those enjoying a wonderful trip through Europe, but of mild interest to language nerds staying at home:
There are a lot of Italian words in which the letter "i" appears where you'd expect the letter "l". The best examples I can think of right now are "fioro" (flower) and "fiume" (river). When I first saw those words on a map, I thought it was a misprint, since lowercase "i" and "l" look similar.
But I'd expect the words to be "floro" (like "floral") and "flume" (as in the amusement park attraction known as a "log flume").
All that to say, if you take "Firenze" and treat it the same way, you can see how we English-speakers came to call it "Florence".
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