Driving 102 & Florence, Italy

From Theory to Practice

I took my written driving test last week and I passed!  I missed one question out of 30.  So I passed Driving 101 (my term).  Now I need to pass Driving 102, or the actual driving test.  I have two chances to do so.  If I fail both, I pay another 90 euros and start all over again.

I have driven a car since I was 16, 45 years.  You would think this would a cinch.  Think again.  First,

you are driving the Auto School car, which is unfamiliar and which is a stick shift.  I know how to drive a stick, so I didn't think that would be a problem.  But you also need to show that you know the functionality of the specific car that you are driving in, how to turn on the lights, the front fog lights, the back fog lights (which I had never heard of before I started studying for the written test), how to open the hood and the trunk, where the reflective jacket is that you are required to wear when you are on an interurban highway and your car has broken down and you need to get out of the car with the vest on, etc.  Then of course you need to drive around the city, listening to the evaluator's instructions of where to go, and watching for vehicles, pedestrians and all the various signs on the road.

I had my first practice test this Thursday.  It went okay, but it was not stellar.  I would not have passed if it was a real test.  So it convinced me that I needed to sign up for about 8 practice sessions (at 25-28 euros a pop) and shoot for the driving exam on May 20.  It's tough to set up these practice sessions.  There are two cars each hour from 7 am to 11:30 pm 7 days a week, but the slots are pretty filled up.  So I have two sessions for next week and six more the week afterwards.  Hopefully I'll be ready on the 20th.

Short Trip to Florence, Italy

I have not taken many European trips since I moved here, other than some trips within Spain and to London.  My first year was all about settling in Barcelona, improving my Spanish and becoming more integrated with life here.   That is still happening, but I will hopefully be taking some short trips over the course of this year, especially with meeting up with Chris, who will be living in Kiev and rendezvousing in various cities in Europe.

I had the pleasure of reconnecting with an ex-colleague from the OCC, Doug R.  He was in Barcelona for a month last August, loved it, and decided to take his next 6 month European stay from Florence, where he was living for the last two years, to Barcelona for 2015.  He needed to go to Florence for a week and asked if I would like to come.  I thought that would be a great opportunity, so I booked a flight and went there for four days, staying in the apartment that Doug rented.

Although the weather was a little cloudy and it rained some, Florence is a beautiful but small city.

Doug & I on Manuel's Terrace

 It's all very walkable.  The place is filled with tourists, which is the unfortunate part.  But the architecture and the art there is amazing.  Doug is good friends with a Bolivian named Manuel who has Italian roots and owns a property management business for short term rentals.  We arrived and we were soon on Manuel's roof terrace for a barbecue overlooking a gorgeous section of the city and chatting with his extended family in Spanish, all of which I was not expecting but enjoyed thoroughly.  We met up with Manuel two other times, once to go to the local soccer game (the team is called Fiorentina and they were playing Cagliari - a city on the island of Sardinia - Fiorentina lost) and have dinner, and the other time was to visit his business office and have some coffee before I jumped on the bus to leave.  It was nice to see a non-tourist aspect of Florence and to meet Manuel and his family.

Doug took me around most of the city and I spend a few hours visiting the Uffizi Museum, which has wonderful paintings and sculptures, some of them by DiVinci and Michaelangelo.  I also had my fill of genuine Italian pasta, pizza and wine.  I found it very interesting that the bread in Florence is unsalted.  I talked to one of my Italian friends from my Spanish class afterwards and she said that that is typical of Tuscany and that Italian bread is very different in different regions of Italy.  I also tried a very regional sandwich in Florence called Lampredotto, which is tripe very well cooked and seasoned so it is very tender, with an olive oil-based sauce in a bread roll.  It was actually really good.  My good friend Cristian who lives in Barcelona and is from Bologna, Italy, had never heard of it.


If the weather had been better, I would have gone to Lucca, a medieval town close to Florence.  I'll save that for another time, hopefully with Chris and we can do a Tuscany tour of Pisa, Florence, Lucca and Sienna.