Firenze
Thursday, September 14th, 2006
We found much to enjoy in Florence. The weather was warm and bright, the trees are still a pretty green and the churches and museums are quite extraordinary. This makes up for the 10 million tchotchke-buying, 3-camera-toting, McDonald’s-eating, cigar-smoking, baggage overloaded*, plump tourist which one must move through in order to enjoy said museums and churches. I’m not complaining; I’m one of the tourists. But I don’t know how the Tuscans do it. It is September, the end of tourist season, and still they find the will to smile. Outstanding.
Most especially, we have enjoyed the food here. To be frank, I wasn’t expecting a lot whilst here because it’s hard for a tourist (like me!) to find a non-tourist joint that serves more than pizza and spaghetti and doesn’t charge 20 euro for the experience. However, we miraculously stumbled across 2 excellent places just a block from our hotel. The first is a cafe/bar at which we have cappuccini and croissants each morning. We had only been in twice before they remembered who we were and what we wanted. How delightful to find such a nice routine! The second place is a diner, of all things, with round booths and menus printed on paper place mats. We originally went in because we were hungry and couldn’t walk any further but were so happy to have great bruschetta, warm, chicken-liver tapenade, homemade tagliatelle and ravioli with walnut cream sauce. It was like our beloved Diner Deluxe. We even got freshly grated parmesan and a half-liter of unexpectedly good house wine. In half an hour, we are going back for another meal.
* As a sidebar, I can’t help but make an example of the couple we saw on our day-trip to Siena today. A young couple, they had TEN pieces of luggage with them, not including the heavy jacket and sweater they were carrying outside the bags. I don’t know how they manouever at all because it took several minutes blocking the door to the carriage to get off in Siena and they would’ve had to make it down and up two sets of stairs before even entering the station. And try to find a taxi that will fit all that luggage. Wow.