all in the family.

What a nice night. Took a break from the whole climb-up-the-hill-every-night-at-8-pm-for-dinner-regardless-of-whether-or-not-that-is-remotely-convenient and had a nice night in town with some friends. The studio arts program here treats us so well, I swear to god – they started this new program where they opened up an art gallery, not just for student work but for visiting artists as well, and tonight was their first opening, which featured a group of photographers from California (ironically), who each gave a little introduction to their work (there were I think 4 of them), followed by a full-on reception with hors d’ouerves and free champagne. So I had a nice little convesation with Mel about the progression of photography as an art form, a few glasses of spumante, and then meandered over to Sam, Jess and Tyler’s apartment to figure out where we wanted to go out to dinner. Yes, OUT to dinner. I finally got to go to a restaurant IN Florence and order what I was actually in the MOOD for. SO exciting.

We ended up wandering down a little street off of Borgo Pinti and stopped into a cute little trattoria called Acquacotta – which ended up being SUCH a score. Between the four of us, we had a vegetable terrine with melted mozzarella, followed by spinach and ricotta ravioli with ragù and porcini mushrooms, risotto with zucchini, langoustines and saffron, pheasant ravioli with truffled cream sauce, an entire grilled seabass (like, a fish on a plate, with eyeballs and all), and a bottle of house white, all for around €14 per person. Not too shabby. And it was the sweetest little place - it's been there forever and there was a really old photo on the wall of this little old couple, and it was almost frightening how much the current hostess looked like the woman and the chef manhandling our fish resembled the man. Talk about a family business. Such good food with such fun people, and of course we grabbed a gelato on the way home (I had menta, although Tyler’s vanilla-cherry was pretty damn tasty). All in all a nice, low-key night. And on that note, to my bed I go… buonanotte!