Well, it looks like we're staying here a bit longer. Tripit sent us a notice that something was wrong with our return flight, and several phone calls and a couple of hours of arguing later, it seems our connecting flight was canceled and due to the covid situation we won't get home until Friday. Oh darn...
But I will say thank goodness for travel insurance, or this change would have been pretty costly, as all the airline will cover is the airfare change. We do have to move to a different airbnb though because this one is already rented out this week. Luckily the owner of this one knows the owner of another one in this same building, and hers is available, so we're just moving downstairs. Thank God for small favors...
Anyway, no cappuccino or cornetto today, the cafe is closed on Sunday. Also, we had to get moving early because Alessandro and his girlfriend Eloina (Elo) were coming to pick us up for the day. Eloina is from Nicaragua, so she speaks both Italian and Spanish, and naturally when Alessandro told me this, I promptly forgot every word I know in either language and had to rely on the translator for the next hour or so until my brain decided to start working again... *Sigh*
They took us to Fiesole, which is a gorgeous little hilltop town overlooking Tuscany. The views here are breathtaking. We walked around for about an hour and had coffee, then hopped back in the car and headed to Luco di Mugello for lunch, where several family members were meeting us. In total we had a table for 14, so more than 1/2 of our party were new family we hadn't yet met. What a treat it was!
Lunch was at a place called Pizzeria Valeri, and we were there about 3 hours before I even saw a pizza. Lol. I thought this was a bit odd, but Francesca told me they only sell pizza at night. Go figure…
During the day, apparently, they sell ridiculously amazing full course meals (I guess they switch to pizza at night to give themselves a break, lol). However, there doesn't appear to be a written menu, so the menu is given in kind of a "here's the menu, pass it on" telephone game sort of way.
The server told a couple of people around the table at choice spots, and then they passed it on to people next to them, who did the same and so on until we had all been filled in.
We started with spinach ravioli and potato tortellini served with 3 different sauces-salvia (sage) and cheese, ragu (meat sauce), and chingiale (wild boar). All were really tasty, but the sage one was by far my favorite. Both pastas were so delicious in their own right, this was the sauce that most let them be tasted, without being drowned out by other flavors- simple, but delicious.
Next, we had fried pumpkin flowers. I'm not sure why squash blossoms of any kind aren't cooked in the states (or at least nowhere that I've seen), because they're delicious. These were very lightly breaded and fried, but they weren't greasy at all, so I'm not sure how they did that except by witchcraft, so that's what I'm going with.
For the main course, we had a few choices, but I got kind of stuck on what I heard for the first one, so I didn't hear anything after it that was familiar to me except bistecca. When it came our turn to order, we were still very confused by option 1, and neither of our phones had signals so the translators weren't working, so I panicked and just ordered bistecca. Man, there's a lot of pressure surrounding food in this country...
After the ordering was complete, we asked Francesca what she ordered, and she'd gone with option 1, so we were able to get some clarification. What did she order? Stinco... That's right. S-T-I-N-C-O. Pronounced just as you might think - stinko. You can probably understand why we were confused when a table of 14 people largely ordered something the name of which sounds like a thing you most certainly don't want to ingest... Lol
After a bit of explaining, we were able to discern that it's pork leg. When the translators were back up, we learned that stinco means shin. So, pork shin. Also, when the translators were back up, I explained to everyone that stinko in English means something doesn't smell good, and everyone had a good laugh at that.
The general consensus of the table was that it is delicious. So, we were a little bit disappointed that we didn't know what it was before we ordered, because we would have ordered that instead of the bistecca.
Don't get me wrong, bistecca is amazing, but we just had it yesterday. No worries though, there was plenty of everything to share, so we were able to have some stinco, and we also shared our bistecca, so everyone was happy. And it was, in fact, delicious. Stinco doesn't stinko.
Somewhere in there we were also served sides of French fries (which they seem to love here), salad (which doesn't ever come with dressing - just olive oil, salt, and maybe a lemon or lemon juice), and grilled vegetables (eggplant, zucchini, and bell peppers).
For dessert we all shared a couple of slices of castagnaccio. This one had more rosemary than Claudia's, but otherwise was very similar and tasty.
We had a bit of a mixup with the server when he came and asked if we wanted more wine. Elo said we didn't want another liter, but she wanted one more glass, and Frankie said he wanted another glass too, so ordered due (two), and we were brought 2 litres of wine instead of two glasses. Thankfully, everyone at the table was happy to help us not let it go to waste. We also had Vin Santo and Cantucci all around, and of course the required coffee. Frankie and Alessandro's uncle also shared a toast with grappa. Alla famiglia!
Alessandro and Elo brought us back to our flat, and we were so full from lunch, we didn't make it to dinner. In fact, I fell asleep at about 8pm, and didn't wake up again until midnight.
Thankfully, we had some ravioli still left over from the other day, so Frankie had that for a snack. Tomorrow, we move to the other flat and start our bonus days, so tonight we pack up for that.
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