Ciao from Firenze!

Sunday May 29^th

We arrived in Florence this afternoon after taking the train from Lausanne through the alps to Milan and then from Milan to Florence.  Of course here the town is called Firenze.  Why in the world do we call it Florence if its residents call it Firenze? That doesn’t make any sense at all. I think everyone in the world should refer to the city using its given name. Do people elsewhere in the world call Philadelphia by a different name? or New York City?

We had pizza for lunch in the train station in Milan.  Granted it was train station pizza, but still it was better than most train station pizzas. I look forward to a good sit down meal.

We are staying in an actual villa here in Firenze.  It is nothing to look at form the front – it kind of looks like a standard row home, but on the inside it is all redone, and we even have a patio and a backyard. Katie is so excited!  We both also have our own bedrooms. 

Despite the advantages of having our own nice big place, the main disadvantage is that it forces you to quickly come to terms with navigating in a new culture.  This place is way out in the residential section section of Florence, away from the tourist bustle, which is nice, but again has it disadvantages.  I had to grill our landylady, Ms. Rita on finding the bus stops, buying bus passes, finding the grocery, finding a pizzeria and most importantly, finding a gelateria.

We arrived on a Sunday, and Ms. Rita cheerfully informed us that the grocery store, the biggest one around is just across the street. “But it’s closed on Sunday. There is one in the tourist section that is open on Sunday though.”    Ok, so then, we’ll need to take the bus to the tourist region.

“Where is the bus stop?”

“Just around the corner, very easy.”

“Is there a ticket machine there.”

“No but you can buy your ticket at a Tabac shop.  However, they are closed on Sunday.”

“Does the bus run on Sunday?”

“Yes, just not so very often as the week.”

Ok – so the grocery is closed, and I can’t buy a bus ticket.  Maybe the restaurants are open?

“Is the nearby restaurant open on Sunday?”

“Maybe, I’m not sure. Maybe the gelataria is open”

So, we can’t get groceries, we can’t get a bus pass, and the restaurant may or may not be open.  We can probably get gelato though and I have four big chocolate bars from Broc, Switzerland in my bag. We might get a stomachache, but we won’t starve.

Once Ms. Rita left us, we set out for the gelateria, and walked past the big grocery store, which was very obviously open. So after all, we were able to get perfectly fine and nutricious groceries. We picked up a pizza, some fresh pasta, some tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, but no basil.  The fruit and vegetable section was  bt confusing to me, and I have to abandon the basil! 

You weigh your fruits or veggies on a scale right in the produce section, and then print out a label for it.  But I couldn’t find a code for the basil. So I laid in wait until someone else tried to buy basil so I could copy what she did. I figured this is Italy, someone is going to buy basil soon.  And up someone came, she pulled out a hand scanner, scanned in the bar code on the sign and walked off.  Arrgh!  I ran up to her and asked if she spoke English. Of course she didn’t.  So I pointed to the scale, to the basil in her hand, and the basil in mine, then shrugged.  She showed me the scanned and pointed me up to the front.  I walked up front but still didn’t find a hand scanner, so gave up on the basil.

Katie talked me into a huge tub of gelato and some interesting looking saucer shaped cakes with bright green shiny frosting. I helped myself to a nice bottle of wine.  I hope I can find my wine opener from Paris.

After taking the groceries home, we re-set out for the geletaria.  We saw plenty f people eating gelato so we knew we were close. It was across the street from the grocery store.  For just 1.70 euros, you could get a huge cone with two different flavors.  Katie was in heaven to find out there is nutella gelato. She paired the sweet nutella with a tart lemon.  I had pistachio and asked for melona to go with it, but instead got melagra, due to my poor pronounciation, but was fine with it. it turned out to be run raisin.  Both flavors were excellent.

 We plan to spend the afternoon and evening resting in our garden after the trip and the disorientation of easing into a new culture. Katie pointed out to me that in the grocery store that I kept trying to talk n French to the cashier, who understood neither French nor English and just wanted to see my ID to verify my credit card. Hopefully our pasta dinner will be tasty, but it will certainly be relaxing.