Well, here we are almost two weeks since my last Italy post... and my last blog post period! It's not that I have not wanted to continue writing about our Italy adventures, but work has really taken over all my time.. so no time to blog and even when I am wrapped with work, don't have the mental capacity to write or sit in front on the computer (play on my iPhone, well that's another thing... have to stay connected somehow!).
Anyhow, I will wrap up our final night in Florence here and say I am not sure if or optimistically when I will get around to our last stop of the trip, 4 days in Rome. I just feel that I have lost so much momentum on these posts... and probably need to freshen things up with book posts (have finished 4 book since my last book post!) or just some other kind of my normal minutia!
So picking up where we left off, we were still in the midst of our 24 hours of great Italian food. It started at Francescovini with a wonderful dinner after sunset at Piazzale Michelangelo and overall a particularly physical day... continued with lunch at the Central Market's Nerbone with heavenly boiled beef (now there's a phrase you don't see every day) sandwiches... and then we just decided to pick a restaurant out of our guide book and decided upon Le Fonticine described in our guide book as "Silvano Bruci's trattoria is the place to go for Italian soul food, based on his wife's Bolognese family recipes."
We thought we were doing well, holding off on dinner until nearly 8pm. While checking out the menu on the window, there was a guy waiting in the door... he seemed like he was waiting for someone, but after we decided to go for it, it ended up being what we would later guess was the son of the owner ... and oddly in communication he seemed to morph between American, French, and Italian.... though if related to the owners, he was obviously Italian ... we did see an older gentleman during our meal, who almost certainly was Silvano.
Anyhow, this guy brought us to a really cool back room of the restaurant... and walking through the kitchen, which was kind of funny since it reminded me of the Italian chain restaurant here, Bucca di Beppo which makes such a fuss to walk you "through" the kitchen before seating you... here it was certainly not a gimmick! Anyhow, as we were walking through we realized we were the first people in the restaurant... which was kind of embarrassing but funny since we thought we were doing so well holding off to a later time. Fortunately, it did start filling up very shortly thereafter.
Anyhow, the meal was wonderful and I made sure I hit all things Italian that were on the menu... so we opened with bruschetta, ordered a bottle of wine... and I had some kind of pasta as my first dish and a herbed grilled chicken (fresh herbs!) as my second dish. It still amazes how different in Italy is and that pasta is considered the start of the meal and not the "be all, end all"... but the difference is the portion sizes are respectable that you can have an enjoyable meal spread out over the course of a couple of hours (again, something Europeans do right!). I finished up with a cappuccino and tiramisu. Can't get more Italian than that!
One of our lasting memories was observing another table of two older couples from America. It's really no wonder America gets the reputation that we do! First, they were hashing over what wine to order... there was this big discussion of who preferred red or white... that continued on when the waiter arrived. These waiters were old skool older guys too, who had clearly been doing this job for decades... and while these folks couldn't make up their minds, the waiter just wrapped it all up saying he would bring one bottle each of the red and white house wine. The couples seemed baffled by the decision that just had been made on their behalf, but it was pretty amusing... and one thing we learned on this trip was to never hesitate to get the house wine (though we didn't at this place).
The best thing was when the salads were ordered (or arrived?) and one of the women asked if they had a "creamy Italian" dressing... the waiter appeared a bit nonplussed... I think "Italian" dressing is a hard concept for them to understand, let alone a "creamy" version of it. With that discussion off the table, she then asked if she could have the dressing "on the side"... another head-slap! What we had learned with our own meal and what occurred there, was that salads were simply drizzled with oil and vinegar by the waiter at a central table... I think the waiter ended up bringing her the bottles of each, but again... it's really no wonder Americans get the eye-rolls when away from home.
Although there were a few exceptions, we ended up kind of thinking that this back room was where they put the tourists as the room largely ended being English or Asian speaking diners... and on the way out the front room seemed quite Italian. Really quite amusing, but I can't say I blame 'em!
With a midday train to Rome the next day, we headed back wound our way slowly back to the hotel via the Duomo... and the next day didn't do all that much except make sure to use our remaining gelato festival tickets and I even popped into an bookstore... so much fun to try and figure out titles and see the covers of American novelists in Italian.
Again, the whole train situation was a breeze... we got to the station about an hour early, but again I think we could have arrived their 10 minutes before, climbed aboard and been on our way to Rome... again it is such an efficient, seemingly on-time and certainly no stress situation.
Okay, that finally ends Florence... again, no promises on Rome stories... but if you check out my Rome Flickr photo gallery (which, as of this writing, is still in-progress but almost done) you'll get some stories there and see that we did and saw pretty much hit all the expected spots!
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