Ok seriously, if I keep living like this I think I might OD on happiness. I really don’t remember ever having as carefree (or food-filled) of a day in my life as I did today. I'm pretty much writing it down to prove to myself that it actually happened.
So I wake up at 11 or so, lounge around, faccio un po di colazione (hazlenut toast with jam, yogurt, some biscotti.. and, well, a couple pieces of chocolate. When in Rome… or.. Florence?), then spend the entire day wandering aimlessly throughout the city with my roommate. The WHOLE day. We walked down tiny Borgo Pinti to Piazza Santa Croce, grabbed a panino (my first truly Italian panino, the first of many firsts of the day – bresaola, pomodori, arugula and grana on a deliciously salty and olive-oily ciabatta), and then finally had my first gelato italiano (I was waiting for a place that looked sufficiently creamy – I got nocciola of course, and a little crema). We met up with Mel in the Piazza della Signoria, perhaps the most beautiful place on earth, and had to stop and admire the gorgeousness on the patio at Pasticceria Riviore, a rather overpriced yet incredibly delicious/perfectly executed outdoor caffè, where I indulged in my SECOND gelato italiano of the day, about 30 minutes after my first. Italy just does that to you, I guess. After sufficiently stuffing ourselves with beauty and heavy cream, we wandered down to the Ponte Vecchio, the bridge that crosses the Arno and is lined with little shops, mostly jewelry and perfume stores. SO breathtaking. We strolled along south of the Arno until we hit the next bridge, then crossed back over and headed home to shower before dinner.
Tonight we went out for dinner – Elisa wanted her friends to meet us, so we all met at a quaint little pizzeria called L’Antica something-or-other (yes, I am a tard and have already forgotten the name), and I basically had the meal that I always have at Franny’s, except 100 times more Italian, and by that I mean instead of a half a pizza and half a dessert per person, we each ate a whole pie, a whole dessert, plus antipasti (little golden balls which they could only describe as pane fritto, aka fried bread; fresh cheese, like before it even fully becomes mozzarella, studded with shaved black truffle; and salty prosciutto cotto) and of course a bottle of red and a limoncello after dessert. My pizza, called La Bella Napoli, was basically a glorified margherita, but man was it glorified. Fresh pomodorini, mozzarella di bufala, basil, and what had to be at least half a bottle of olive oil. Era esquisita. And my dessert, an homage to Franny’s, was panna cotta, complete with a little sprinkling of macerated berries to keep my fat little hand coming back for more. And although most of this food was being forced upon me once I hit about the halfway point of the pizza, I still managed to find room for a bite of Tashiya’s nutella crepe and Elisa’s pizza di frutta (basically a shitload of cream on top of some crispy thing with some fruit somewhere in the middle – pretty much awesome.)
So yeah. I was pretty much crippled after this 2-hour affair, but managed to drag myself back to Piazza Savonarola with my roommate, mainly for some freakin' exercise and time to digest, but also to meet up with Mel and Marinna and scope out i ragazzi italiani. The crowd seemed smaller and younger this time, like high school age, so I called our new Italian friend Fabrizio to see what was going on with him and his gang and they actually drove to Savonarola to chill with us even though I told him we could only stay for like 30 minutes since I'm going to Cinque Terre at the asscrack of dawn tomorrow (expect another gushy post about this later). It was fun, but we were all tired and I was gonna call a cab but Fab insisted on driving me home, which was really cute - I didn't realize that he kind of has a little crush on me until he got a little awkward in the car, haha. It's really funny, he always tries to talk to me in his broken English and I always respond in my broken Italian, so I feel like if we had a transcript of our conversations it would be freakin' HILARIOUS. But when he dropped me off he was like (imagine a really thick Italian accent): "Alex, Iya wanta tooa aska youa a questione... dooa youa elike eme?" And I couldn't help but kind of laugh, and in all honesty I don't think I do like him romantically, it's just nice to have a non-skeezy Italian friend to hang out with, so I basically said "non so adesso... vediamo," which basically means I don't know yet, we will see. So that's that. But I'm exhausted now so I'll keep you posted. No pun intended. Ciao!
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