Day 4- Florence- 12 May 2011
Last night (Wednesday), Mom and I had dinner on the terrace at our hotel. The special drink was sparkling peach juice with whiskey, which I thought I would hate. As it turns out, it was shockingly good. The pizza was excellent as well, but the mixture of a little alcohol and a warm pizza increased my jet lag to a dangerous level. I struggled through it to introduce my mom to gelato—I am coming to believe that this is the singular reason she wanted to visit Italy—at my favorite gelateria in Florence: Coronas Café. Afterward, we came back to our room to plan our last day in Florence (today). Sadly, I wasn’t much help. For the first time in a while, I absolutely couldn’t keep my eyes open, drifting in and out of conversation. I’m not sure when Mom caught on, but the next thing I knew she was turning lights out. Sadly, with the nature of jet lag being as it is, I was wide-awake again around 2 am, staring at the ceiling for an hour or two. It’s in these moments that I think about things like what I’ll wear to an upcoming engagement party or what Italian recipes I might try to recreate. So at least I’m using my time wisely…
This morning, we got up for breakfast on the terrace, a perk of our hotel. A slew of pastries, toast, prosciutto, eggs, fruit, juice, and coffee… although the juice and coffee is not served Americana. The orange juice is actually red, and the coffee is like espresso. After breakfast, we struck out on the town.
Our first stop of the day was the Palazzo Pitti, where the Medicis and other powers-that-be in Florence have lived previously. Well, we went over the Ponte Vecchio to get there, but that’s not really a stop so much as a stroll… But anyway, behind the palace, is “the garden that started it all.” That is, supposedly other dynasties copied the Boboli Gardens at their palaces. The gardens go up a steep hill to an eventual panoramic view of Florence. The view was breathtaking, but we walked up about a thousand steps to get there. That’s good though, since I’m consuming about that many calories at every meal. The grounds at the Palazzo are home to two cats, which obviously sought us out within minutes of our arrival. Typical. After a little time with the cats, we headed upstairs (Italians LOVE stairs) to the costume museum, where they housed dresses from the early 1700’s up to the 1990’s.
Feeling like we had conquered the Pitti Palace, we decided to seek out lunch. I thought it was high time Mom experienced authentic Italian street pizza, so we ducked into a tiny pizzeria for a couple of slices. It was easily our cheapest meal yet at 6 Euro, and obviously delicious. Next, we strolled along the Arno on our way to Santa Croce, the epicenter of Florentine leather works. It took some searching, but I finally found my way back to the Florence School of Leather, a gem I was introduced to when I was here years ago. It’s a leatherworking school based in the monastery of the Santa Croce church. You can watch the leather workers creating their masterpieces: jackets, purses, wallets, bracelets. You want it, they can make it. We picked up a souvenir or eight.
On the way home, we stopped for Mom’s gelato fix. Obviously, I’m a repeat offender with the Nutella gelato, but she’s experimenting with the fruity varieties. She hit a particular favorite today with peach. If I’m going to have a dessert, I want chocolate, but even I will admit that the peach gelato was perfection.
And speaking of perfection, our dinner tonight was the best yet. We toiled over where to go, and Mom did some research and finally landed on a highly recommended place called The Porcupine, although it sounds much more eloquent in its Italian form. Our waiter, Franco, immediately asked us where we were from and from there asked us if we were ‘Roll Tide’ or ‘War Eagle.’ I thought that was pretty incredible. He said he had friends from Birmingham—we soon found out he has friends EVERYwhere—and that they’re Republicans; I also thought it was funny that he figured that would win our approval. Of all the restaurants in all of Florence, of all the waiters… ours knew about the greatest rivalry in all of college football. Even if he considered himself a Longhorns fan, I had to admire his SEC prowess. He called us “y’all” for the remainder of the evening, which is actually one of my personal pet peeves but he was too kind to correct. It was especially hard to correct him just after he patted my cheek kindly and corrected my pronunciation of “bruschetta.”
I have found that my pronunciation of Italian words is oftentimes better than my actual English. That is, my English takes on a decidedly British accent when I’m speaking to Italians. I suspect something in me thinks that’s prettier and easier to understand than a Southern dialect, which I’ve never particularly cared for and always tried to eliminate in myself. I first noticed my British back-up plan my senior year of high school; I was on a cruise with Lauren and ordering room service, when I got off the phone Lauren reprimanded me with a quick, “Who ARE you??” So yeah, I’m a wanna-be. Whatev.
Catch you on the flip side. Or Rome. Whichever. Cheerio!
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