The past few days have been hot. And everywhere I go, I hear something like, "Fa un caldo bestiale!" (It's terribly hot!) There are a million ways for everyone to lament over this hot weather. Most of the time, suffice it to say, “Che caldo!” (What heat!) As one of my Florentine friends, Massimiliano, told me. "Non si contenta mai...il tempo è troppo caldo o troppo freddo." (No one is ever happy...the weather is either too hot or too cold.)
In our apartment, we have to close all the windows by 9AM and can't open them up until well past midnight. The air is hot with temperatures in the upper 90's and only cools off to the low 70's for a few hours in the early morning hours.
I’m certainly not complaining about the heat much because we're lucky to have an air conditioner in our apartment. Many people here only have fans and so they have to close the shutters and windows and live in a dark, yet fairly cool, apartment during the day.
The hard part for me is going to the gym, which doesn't open until 10AM and has no air conditioning. Everyone must know it can be hot in there because I was alone for about an hour with the ceiling fans on full blast before anyone else showed up. Luckily, my gym is underground, but I can still feel the warm air when I arrive. I can’t imagine going there in the afternoon, when the temperatures must be unbearable.
This afternoon I walked across the Piazza Santa Croce and noticed that Dave and I were the only ones walking in the sun. At first, I thought that maybe the tourists had suddenly left the city, but then I noticed that in the shady area of the piazza there were many tourists taking refuge from the intense sun (as shown in the picture).
After looking at the previsioni meteorologiche (weather forecast), it's going to get much hotter in Florence before it cools down. We might even have a thunderstorm on Friday and at this point, we’d be happy to get it so that we can cool down a little bit.
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