Voyage Toujours

So, now I know what I’m doing in May.  I’ve received confirmation of my enrollment at the Michelangelo Institute in Florence.  I’d been searching for a language school that also had concurrent art history classes and I was looking at the Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo schools.  Just this past Sunday in the Travel section of the L.A. Times there was a quick article on solo travel and one of the blurbs was about the Michelangelo school.  The school provides housing options and one of them was your own apartment, but the selection was not very good, so I went on to airbnb.com and found me a nice small place, a little away from the tourist crush but close enough to walk to the school. It’s in the Oltrarno section of Florence, that’s across the river and west of the Ponte Vecchio area.  The school is by Piazza Santa Croce.  That’s a good ½ hour walk or so.  I will have 3 weeks of language class, M-F from 9a – 1p and the art classes are Tues & Thurs from 3p – 5p.  Just like the school in Paris, you take an assessment test online as well as an oral test on your first day to determine your level in said language.

Unfortunately, the da Vinci schools don’t have any da Vinci engineering classes.  It would be cool to study his engineering methods for a few sessions in the city where he invented so many of his machines.  The art history classes will cover things about de Vinci from his work as a painter, Michelangelo who took his inspiration for St. Peter’s dome from Brunelleschi’s dome in Florence, that’s the photo you always see of Florence.  It will also cover the Medici who shaped the Florence landscape and put it on the map politically as well as other Renaissance artists.  Even though my focus for this trip is to get certified in French, Italy is one of my favorite places in Europe.   Can’t wait.