A morning caffe.

Daily market goods. This made our lunch and dinner.

THE best pasta of my entire life. No joke. (uncooked in picture)

“Le fragole hanno scelto fresco dalla foresta.”

Strawberries picked fresh from the forest.

One of my favorite shots so far.

The vehicles here make me double over with laughter at least twice a day.

It is Carnivale season.

Everyday scenes.

“Duo caffe, per favore.”

Sidewalk cafes and bicycles.

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Today’s highlights

-little boy dressed up in a beaver suit at the park

-acting like an ape-person at the market. Apparently I cannot speak Italian OR English and I just go- “uhh.. derrruhh. guhh” and use the stick-out-hand-with-money-and-hope-the-shopkeeper-is-honest method.

- the crazy gypsy lady who followed around the piazza, shaking her cup at us for a full 5 minutes

- first gelatto experience (on crack) = scaldare/warm waffle con nutella e gelatto alla stracciatella (chocolate chip/shavings)

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The market just around the corner from our apartment.

carote

peperoni

Basilica de Santa Croce

The wine shop (also around the corner) sells wine out of these wooden casks. We watched as our bottles were filled with wine, corked, and hand-labeled. The wine we got ended up being less than 4 Euro per bottle.. and that includes the bottle retainer. If we take the bottle back to be refilled, we dont have to pay for the bottle next time- just the wine!

Later in the evening I decided to go for a stroll to see The Duomo. I should have known from the first missed turn that the night would turn out to be a bit of a disaster. I could not, for the life of me, find any of the streets that Google said I should take to get to the cathedral. I walked way longer than the 10 minutes it was supposed to take.. then I walked some more and I still hadn’t found any of the streets I needed to be on. I considered breaking out my first bit of Italian for the day “Scusi, dov’e Il Duomo?”. I’m not even sure that is the correct way to ask for it… but that is what I was going to say. then I entered an intersection and looked to my left and VOILA! PRESTO!

I walked around the entire perimeter, trying to find the best vantage point to take a photograph (the one I saw had scaffolding in front of it) and that is how my night really got screwed up. I circled around the Duomo and ended up in an area I didn’t recognize. Long story short, I ended up in the opposite direction that I needed to be and spent a good hour walking around trying to find my way. I finally stumbled across an English bookstore and bought a map and an Italian-English dictionary. Even WITH the map, it took me another hour or so to get home. The streets are so confusing here.

When I was most of the way home, I stumbled upon a 99 Euro-cent store where I bought a bag of these treats labeled as “trecciole con cacao”. I ate the entire bag the rest of the way home to soothe my flustered self.

The only shot I took yesterday.. View from my bedroom near dusk.

The Great Synagogue of Florence and in the background the hillside town of Fiesole.