Those of you who check this blog three times a day (don't be embarrassed...I know you're all doing it) may realize that I've been M.I.A. for a while. My excuse is that I was in Italy for my winter break, traveling to Florence, Rome and Venice with my college roommate Eunice. It was my first time in Italy and it ended up being a pretty incredible vacation.
It would be impossible to write about everything that happened in 18 days and--more importantly--it would be really boring for you. So I'm splitting the trip up into three entries, one for each of the three cities that we visited. First up, Florence.
The trip got off to a rocky start when Paris and London came under a crippling attack from that most brutal of all nature's forces: snow. Two whole inches of it. I know. Clearly enough to delay my flight for two hours and to cancel Eunice's flight completely. Luckily, after two days of solo wandering Eunice arrived and the trip took a turn for the better. Florence is a small enough city that most of the major sights can be seen within a day or too (especially without the long lines of summer tourists), so we managed to pack a lot in in the 5 1/2 days we were there. Here are some of the highlights:
5) Tripe sandwich
Of course my first favorite experience would involve food. But one of the best things about living in Europe has been the opportunity to expand my culinary horizons. Not that I'm not adventurous back in the States. I have eaten a cheeseburger in almost every one of the 50 states. Sometimes I can be persuaded to try chunky peanut butter. Still, there's a little room for improvement.
We became unwittingly adventurous when we went to visit Dante's house and noticed a line of locals ordering lunch on the opposite side of the alley. The place was a literal hole-in-the-wall, with a menu written only in Italian. Eunice and I adopted the point-and-mime method of ordering, while the woman behind the counter sprinkled unknown spices onto some mystery meat. Sometime after we had placed our orders, but before the food was in our hands, she conveyed in her limited English that our unknown order was, in fact, tripe. At that point it was too late to turn back. And so it was that we found ourselves eating cow's stomach in an Italian alleyway. Yay for adventure.
4) The Salvatore Ferragamo Museum
Italy is a fashion capital. This normally would mean nothing to me, considering that if a designer has not had a guest spot on Project Runway, I probably don't know who they are. Eunice, however, actually knows her fashion, and one of the few names that she has managed to ingrain in my memory is that of Florentine shoe designer to the stars, Salvatore Ferragamo.
Now, for God knows what reason, I was put in charge of navigating around Florence. This meant I could put my prodigious sense of direction to use by giving helpful directions like: "I feel if we just head in this direction for a while, we might end up somewhere. Maybe." Needless to say, we got lost looking for a market, and somehow ended up standing in front of the Salvatore Ferragamo Museum (it is also possible that Eunice's internal shoe detector was more to blame). Either way, it was an unexpected stop, but one that was really interesting. Even I can appreciate a great pair of heels, and there were a lot of them here, along with wooden molds Ferragamo made of many starlet's feet (think Marilyn Monroe and both Hepburns, among others).
Ferragamo also divided women into three categories based on their shoe size. I discovered that I am an "aristocrat," which is Italian shoe designer code for "Sasquatch." Apparently my whopping size 7 feet make me "sensitive, rather moody but understanding." So maybe he's not a great psychologist, but he does make beautiful shoes.
3) The views
If I hoped to escape a Parisian winter with a warm Italian vacation, those hopes were dashed upon arrival in Florence, where a hostel employee told me, "It hasn't snowed like this in Florence for ten years." Great.
But the advantage of freezing weather (besides being an excuse to drink lots of caffe lattes) is that I got some rare views of the city under snow. The best came from the Piazza Michelangelo, situated on a hill across the Arno to the south of the city center. I was left breathless at the top, and not just because I am a bundle of butter-clogged arteries.
See for yourself:
2) Teatro del Sale
Yet another food experience, but this one was pretty epic. In fact, I like to think that my four previous months in Europe were training for this new level of gluttony. We found the restaurant thanks to Eunice's guide book, otherwise I'm sure we'd have passed it by, as it's a pretty unassuming storefront in a quiet part of Florence. Before entering, though, we had to sign up for a year-long membership the restaurant's club (only 5 euro, and totally worth it).
Upon entering, we found that wasn't a typical restaurant. For one thing, there didn't seem to be any other English-speakers. For another, there was no menu. Instead, everyone seated themselves and waited expectantly for a few minutes. Then, this guy emerged from a door in the side of the room and yelled at for a while in Italian. After which, platters of food began to emerge and everyone converged to serve themselves. And oh, the food. Course after course of beef, tripe, potatoes, polenta with nutmeg, flaky white fish, breadsticks, perfectly seasoned pasta. We ate. And ate. And ate and ate and ate. For two and a half hours.
At first, the conversation was normal, if interrupted by frequent mouthfuls. After the first hour and a half, however, it began to sound like this:
Eunice: How long have we been eating for?
Alanna: I don't know, but I don't know if I can keep this up.
Eunice: Wait, is he coming out again? I'm so scared.
Alanna: I may die.
Eunice: No! We have to try every course Alanna!
Finally, just as we were on the brink of our very own Mr. Creosote moment, dinner came to a close. Final verdict: One of the best meals I've ever had, but I almost had to roll back to the hostel. The next time you're in Florence, head over to Teatro del Sale, but make sure you fast first.
1) David
I did not expect this to be the high point of the trip to Florence. Don't get me wrong, I think Michelangelo is pretty impressive. But this particular sculpture has been copied and parodied so many times that I didn't expect to be surprised by the original. But what everyone had neglected to tell me is just how tall this guy is.
I'd just assumed that he was life-sized, so I was shocked to turn a corner in the Galleria dell'Accademia and see him looming over the tourists. I know this probably doesn't sound that impressive in blog form, and they didn't allow pictures inside the museum. But trust me, he was tall. Really tall. I promise it was cool.
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So there you have it, my favorite things about Florence: shoes, food and a 13-foot tall naked man. How can Rome top that?
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