Cappuccino e Cornetto (though I swear he called it something else today, but two translators (the Google translate app on my phone and Frankie's evil one that made me look like a druggie) confirmed its Cornetto, so that's what I'm going with).
Today Maria Christina and her daughter Miriam met me and showed me around the city.
They took me to see Il Porcellino, which is a bronze fountain of a wild boar (chingiale) in a marketplace. We've heard about the tradition for this statue-you put a coin in the boar's mouth and let it fall into the bowl below. If the coin falls into the grate in the middle of the bowl instead of elsewhere in it, it's good luck. The more centrally into the grate it falls, the better. Then you rub the nose of the boar to ensure you will return to Florence.
However according to Miriam the real tradition is to rub the coin on the snout first so that's what I did, and it worked because my coin landed dead center in the grate, so looks like I'm coming back to Florence. I'm all bummed about it too because I'm really having a terrible time here in paradise..
We walked all over the place, and they showed me some beautiful buildings that aren't necessarily on the tour map, but really should be seen, such as the post office.
Like, y'all, if the post office is so pretty you could cry, who cares about standing in line to ship a package?
Maria Christina went to a window while we were there and I assumed she had some postal matter or other to attend to, however she returned with a gift for us! 6 stamp to commemorate our trip - three for Dante's 700th, one of the David, one of Santa Croce (the neighborhood we're staying in), and one of San Minato, the church we can see across the Arno from our terrace.
Maria Christina's family has a friend who owns a leather store, and they took me there to look at jackets. I tried on 3 of the most beautiful jackets I've ever seen, but I couldn't decide which one I loved most so I'm going to have to bring Frankie back with me to help me decide.
We also went to a store that is located in what was the convent of Santa Maria Novella. It's called the Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella . It was started by Dominican friars in 1221, and they cultivated a vegetable garden which quickly expanded to cultivating many natural remedies. Today they also have several other offerings such as skincare and perfumes.
This place is gorgeous, the presentation of their products is wonderful, and they have a really cool system in place for making purchases. When you decide you want a product (after being given the opportunity to sample /smell it), you tell the worker who helped you and they give you what they call a shopping card. It looks a bit like a hotel key card.
As you go through the store, anything additional you want to purchase gets added to the card. When you're ready to check out, you go into the checkout room and hand them your card. They go retrieve your items from the stock and put them in a bag, and then you pay. Super efficient and fancy!
We had lunch at a new restaurant on the river, and it was delicious. After that they went to pick up their car at the parking garage, and that was like nothing I've ever seen- rather than having several stories of cars, they are stacked on top of each other using hydraulic lifts. Cra-zy!
Maria Christina and Miriam dropped me off near our flat (there's a marathon in Santa Croce tomorrow, so most of the roads around us are closed). I met up with Frankie and since Miriam had recommended a Gelato place near us, we had a Gelato (delicious) and aperitivo. They had some pretty delicious - looking cakes too, so you get a picture of that.
For dinner we decided to go back to il FrancescaBaldovino. It's a holiday weekend here, so there's a lot of people in town, and they were very busy so we only got the one waiter this time - the cleanup waiter from the other night (we learned during this visit his name is Zac).
He remembered us, and I guess since we are regulars now he was much more attentive to what we ordered. Frankie picked a wine and he told us no, that wine wasn't good, but he'd bring us an alternate in the same price range that was. I have no idea what the other one was like, but the one we got was fantastic!
It was the first day of their fall menu, so I had risotto with pumpkin and sausage that was to die for, and Frankie had pumpkin ravioli with shrimp. This was delicious, but I have to explain it to you...
The ravioli were orange, and there was shrimp and truffle shavings on top. So we thought maybe the pasta was pumpkin flavored and the filling was just the traditional cheese. We were wrong. The pasta was regular pasta, they just must have dyed it orange to be festive. Inside the pasta was a mixture of ground shrimp and pumpkin with a very light a amount of cheese just to make it salty. Unbelievably good.
We asked about dessert, and he recommended cheesecake, but neither of us like that so we asked for the menu. When he came back to take our order, Frankie started to ask for the chocolate something or other and again Zac said no. He knew what dessert we needed and he'd bring it for us. What he brought was a baked pastry of what might have been several layers of phyllo, or whatever the equivalent is here, separated by whipped cream, and topped with berries. Perfetto!
He brought the same thing for the table next to us, and they were finishing theirs as we were about to start ours. We asked the gentleman how it was, and he said he loved it too much. He then asked what the English word is for liking it too much. We weren't following, so he said "if you like to drink too much you're an alcoholic. If you like dessert too much, what are you?" "diabetic", I replied.
Turns out he's a pharmacist, so he got a kick out of my reply. But I don't think he believed us that there isn't really a word for it. We told him mostly we just say *whatever it is*-aholic (chocoholic, dessertoholic, etc.)
As we were leaving, we heard some commotion in the piazza, and when we got there it was a mad house. When we arrived at dinner, there was maybe 20 people in the square, and now there were hundreds, as well as 3 police cars and two fire trucks.
We have no idea what started it, but they were arresting a man who was resisting. It seemed very much like he was under the influence of something so they had an ambulance come in, and took him away on a stretcher. We were very impressed with how professional the police were. The crowd was wound up and the person they were arresting was acting crazy, but they kept their cool 100%. By the time that was all done, it was almost 2am, and the piazza was covered in broken glass and debris. I have no idea how they're going to clean all this up for a marathon in a few hours, so we'll see how that goes...
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