2009 Florence, Italy 1

Florence, Italy

Alan's Log:
Joan's Log:

First Impressions

January, 15th, 2009

Once we arrived in Florence I felt I could spread my wings and fly!

Everything appealed to my senses, everything felt right, everything was good! The art, the narrow streets, the wide piazzas, the cozy cafes, the noisy tratatorias, the food!

Oh lord…the food! Our kind of food, what I have been cooking intuitively for years is here, only way better, what I aspire to cook. I am learning, with every bite and remembering. I will duplicate these amazing meals.

But back to the art, oh lord…is there ever art! Art seeps from the pores of Florence. I am humbled and overwhelmed. It is everywhere, on the corner of a building, an unexpected statue or relief from the 14th century, an ornate door knob on an old house.

The fountains and statues by Donatello, Cellini and Michelangelo and...and... It goes on and on.

Numerous galleries, museums, churches, and palaces packed with paintings and frescos by masters of the Renaissance; Caravaggio, Botticelli, and Michelangelo’s mentor Ghirlandaio, to mention a few. Renaissance art is the pulsating heart of this city.

My new favorite artist of the moment is Botticelli, his faces are so heart-breakingly beautiful and expressive, they would be at home on the pages of today’s Vogue Magazine.

Perfectly groomed as if prepped for a fashion shoot, did people actually look like that in Botticelli’s world or are they from another world inside his head?

This city is “to the manor born”; it is dignified and comfortable in its worn but classic old clothes. This is not Naples, there are no piles of garbage littering the streets, no graffiti desecrating the art and the monuments (not that there isn't grafitti elsewhere), no sign of the mafia that plagues southern Italy. Florence has aged gracefully and retained its history, you see it and feel it as you walk through the piazzas, you can see it in the faces of its proud and elegant citizens. Alan and I are thrilled to be here in the off-season, it may be cold and rainy at times, but that is certainly a small price to pay for the chance to stroll straight up to the Uffizi ticket counter and say “due per favore” and get up close and personal with Michelangelo’s David without a single person to dodge or shoulder to rub.

January 9th, 2009

It is day two. We have been exploring the immediate area on foot and have found a wonderful supermarket within walking distance of the apartment. For dinner tonight we cooked;

MENU

Bastoncino Francese bread.
Toasted, drizzled with New Harvest Extra-Virgin Olive oil and Cannellini beans with Rosemary on top. Capped with dressed mixed salad.

Pan-seared tuna in extra-virgin olive oil, with pesto on top.

White wine to accompany the cannellini beans
Red wine with the Tuna

Italian Wines

Grecatto White and Montefalco Red
Both by Vignabaldo.

Bastoncino Francese bread is like a combination of Foccacio and French bread, It is flat and dense with a thick crust.

We found the supermarket full of "New Harvest" olive oil. We had not come across this before. It is a seasonal product, only available at this time of year (from the October olive harvest). It is unfiltered and opaque. It is strong-tasting with a pepper like after-taste. God it’s good!

The supermarket had several wines on sale and we liked the look of these. We discovered that Vignabaldo is a family owned winery in Umbria that has gone from strength to strength. Last year their Sagrantino was named best red wine of its class at Vinitaly. We tried the Montefalco Rosso . It is from the same hillside, but a blend of Sagrantino and Sangiovese, which is much more approachable and has complexity without being overly serious. Grechetto is a white grape that is part of a standard Orvieto blend but when bottled solo is excellent everyday drinking. These wines sell in the local supermarket for 2 Euros (US$2.60) each. The wine values are amazing here.

The only bad news todate is that Joan will have to be naked for our stay since her bag with ALL her clothes on board did not make it to Florence. I am learning to deal with this hardship.

The Curious Case of the Missing Bag

The only twist in all this Florentine love…was my bag containing all my clothes did not arrive with us. All the other bags did…Alan's clothes and supplies for Moonstruck. But mine somehow got lost along the way. Probably in the absolute chaos that is Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. After staring at the empty bag carousel go round and round and then stop, it became apparent that my bag wasn’t going to show up and we took our places at the end of a very long slow line at the lost and found. After an hour and a half, we were given a “file” number. I was actually encouraged by the number of people reporting missing bags; at least I wasn’t the only one. I became less encouraged after a few days of calling the Air France lost baggage line, waiting on hold for ages, only to be told “we are still looking for your bag”.

All of my winter clothes were in that bag, plus a new supply of summer clothes . Plus there was lots more…my purses, shoes, boots, etc. OK, I admit I’m probably more materialistic then I should be, but it was really more than just clothes to me, it was a carefully compiled collection from places like Portugal, Spain, and Turkey. So… I distracted myself with the delights of Florence, but the days kept passing and I kept wearing the same pair of stretchy brown yoga pants (perfect for long airline travel).

On day seven, we filed formal itemized claims with Air France and our own personal insurance. After sending a fax to Air France we were planning to go to the Santa Croce Church, where Michelangelo’s tomb is. The only thing was, I couldn’t shake a nagging feeling that we should go to the airport to just look in the lost baggage section. Maybe my bag HAD arrived and was just overlooked in a pile somewhere? So we went to the airport instead. The bus trip to the airport was ridiculously long; we were stuck in horrible gridlocked traffic. I assumed it was always this way on Friday afternoons (We later found out some sort of traffic calamity had occurred, as it was on the headlines of all the papers the next day). Once at the airport our baggage search turned out to be futile. Back at the airport bus stop waiting for the bus back to the city, I began to lose hope of ever seeing it again, and it was definitely affecting my mood, which in turn was affecting Alan’s mood.   I had a little “come to Jesus” with myself to come to terms with it, I accepted the loss, besides… I’m in Italy! What better place to buy new clothes?... I felt better; I was ready to move on. I only wished the bus would move on, it was cold and getting colder as it got dark and my thin yoga pants weren’t exactly warm. After two hours a bus finally appeared! Not one of our best days in Florence.

The next morning, day eight, Alan decided to call the lost baggage line again;

“what for?” I asked. Alan ignored me because the agent had just nonchalantly asked;

"where could the bag be delivered?" What??!!

“do you mean that the bag has been found?”

"yes of course" came the reply!

Hmmm…I wonder if that fax we sent the day before had anything to do with this?

Then there was the inevitable mix up with the airport delivery service not being able to contact us because we didn’t have a local phone number, and in the end on day nine, Alan decided to just go pick up the damned thing himself. And that’s the end of the story. My bag is back, all is intact, I learned a rather overdue lesson in humility, and what is really important in the grand scheme of things, and that wearing the same pair of brown yoga pants for over a week wasn’t so horrible after all (and yes, I DID wash them). I think Alan even liked them on me, not that he’ll be seeing me in them anytime soon!