The Villa Ullivi Café

GoodiesVilla Ullivi is the main academic building on the NYU in Florence campus. It houses a library, a computer lab, one lecture hall, a few academic offices and a bunch of classrooms. Each classroom is named after a different Tuscan city. The inside of the building is completely modern, but the structure is as an ancient as the three other villas on our campus Ullivi also houses a café, the place were student’s congregate, get some work done and grab a coffee. Since there are only 350 students on the program, it is never hard to find a familiar face to sit with in the café. The best part about the café if the cheap food and drinks served by a super nice man named Fernando. I choose to just buy coffee and bottled water, but you can also purchase other hot drinks, the cheapest soda in Florence, pastries and sandwiches. A favorite on the campus is a brioche filled with nutella. If you show up at just the right time, you can grab one that had come straight out of the oven. The café has about a dozen tables, and is completely jam packed between classes, but often very quite after the crowd has dissipated. Since the classes are 2 hours and 45 minutes long, the teachers leave a 15 minutes break in the middle of class for students to come down to the café and take a break. This is a great idea because it peps up the class, but I have also become friends with a lot of my peers during these 15-minute breaks. Since Ullivi has wireless Internet, it has also become the place I come to get work done. It cannot be anymore different from Bobst, but it has the same effect on me. When I block out a few hours of my day to sit in the café, I get more work done then I possibly could in my busy house. The café is one of the places I am going to miss the most about Italy. NYU is such a big school; you can walk around all day without running into a familiar face. Ullivi has such a great vibe, such a good feel about just hanging around with other students. Since I transferred from Ithaca, this is the thing I have missed the most about going to a small school. Mmmm..