Yesterday we had a real thunderstorm! it started raining on my way home at 6 am from Lucca (after dropping jenn off at the train) and in a couple hours it was pouring and i had to run outside to gather up the laundry.
after the rain, the day ended up being a perfect cool clear evening, and we drove to florence for dinner with jenn and another Dario (who we’d met in February). I found parking about a km from the duomo — literally a straight shot down the street to it — and as we walked to meet jenn at ponte vecchio, we saw this interesting red installation, which i’d never noticed before. is it new?
And in an alley near the Arno, we saw this horse…
Dinner at Osteria Santo Spirito was fabulous. I have finally found a good restaurant in Florence. And served on copper plates!
while making my polenta yesterday, i realized i didn’t have anything to measure out 250 ml of water, so i guessed from a water bottle, but the ones i could find were the 1.5 liter size (yes, jenn drinks a lot of water), and were very curvy so it was a little difficile to eyeball it. i looked at our local big hardware and all they had were ugly plastic measuring cups. then i went to our Cesare e Miette and they had these lovelies, which should work just fine!
€200 da cesare e mietta… Should i get it?
i made very vegan polenta today with my new scale. the peaches are from my neighbor, who very kindly looked after my basil plant while we were gone last weekend.
This morning we managed a tour of Napoleon’s house and Forte Stella in Portoferraio before getting on the Moby back to Piombino. This time we made a note of which door we parked by on the ferry. On the first trip over, we couldn’t find our car!
I picked up this beautiful Olive wood salad bowl in Siena on Friday just before heading out of town. The shop smelled wonderful! When I got home, I oiled with some of our older EVOO (since I have nothing else…) and the scent of the oil on the wood was amazing! I went ahead and oiled all my cutting boards as well. I am now craving salad…
Did you think Isola d’Elba would be a beautifully preserved landmark of history? Well, we haven’t seen all of it, but so far the main port town, Portoferraio, reminds me of Catalina and Miami beach combined. Not super quaint. Big pretty white rocks on the beach. Mediocre tourist food. The restaurant we landed in for dinner looked cute… it had a Napoleonic flag on the sign and was called Del Borgo. And the food wasn’t bad at all. Inside were some antiques… gramophone, radio, telephone… but they were also hosting a big Italian family reunion from the mainland port town of Piombino, and they kept the one waitress almost fully occupied. When all 18 of them each got their pizzas, we finally got our appetizers. The chef came out and apologized and they were nice enough about it. Really, for tourist food, it was not bad at all. Certainly better than ANY restaurant I’ve been to in Rome so far.
Local church lit with those LED string light…
Free sticker with ferry crossing!
We were one of the last ones on the ferry because when they let you drive into the port, they don’t tell you which dock to go to so we just followed the car ahead of us and the people behind us followed us as well, and we all drove out of the port together!
On the next try, we turned right into the first boat we saw, and just made it on. Then we forgot what door we parked next to and almost didn’t make it off!
While walking around trying to find dinner we came across a restaurant called Tre Cristi and decided to have dinner there. Jenn and Carolyn ordered the Chef’s tasting Menu and Wine pairings and I ordered my usual pasta with olive oil and cheese. What came first as an appetizer was a tiny mixture of bread,tomatoes,and cucumbers drizzled with olive oil and was finished down with a bottle of white wine called Pinot Noir. Then came Carolyn and Jenn’s first of a five course meal ( The portions were tiny.) and it was tuna tartare with anchovies (All the courses were suitable for Jenn.) and a line of peanut sauce which was washed down with a white wine called Pinot Grigio.. Second came their next course which was steamed calamari with basil,squash,and tomatoe and they happily drank a bottle of white wine called Gevurztraminer. During the third course my pasta came along with my mom’s shrimp on baked beans and Jenn’s beans. They drank a red wine (At last!) called Marobino. Carolyn had monkfish for her fourth course and Jenn had gnocchi.(They had the same wine as the fourth course.) Finally the fifth course gruper with eggplant and basil and the final wine was Moscato. desert was melon sorbet and chocolate cake and my mom had creme bruleè both had cofee in the end. And that was the meal of our lives. The End.
