Remember Free Cone Day? That day in early summer which we, the American people, look forward to every year. That magical moment when we are granted a Ben & Jerry's ice cream cone (or, you know, twelve of them) for free. Kids skip school, full-grown and supposedly responsible adults leave work early, traffic is backed up, and general mayhem ensues all because of free ice cream. But they don't have Free Cone Day in France--instead they have Free Macaroon Day.
Every March 20th Pierre Herme, the man who has been called the Picasso of Pastries (among other amusing and usually aliterative names), welcomes you to his boutiques and offers you three macaroons of your choice in return for a small donation, usually of about a euro, which goes towards funding research for rare illnesses. Basically if you can find any problem whatsoever with Free Macaroon Day, you are a horrible person. Eating pastires to help sick children? That's something I could do a lot more frequently than once a year.
Pierre Herme's macaroons are not superior to those of LaDuree, the better known and more traditional provider of French macaroons; they're simply very different. First of all, macaroons in France are not what Americans generally think of as macaroons. They're neither crunchy nor exclusively coconut-flavored. Instead they're a magical concoction, largely butter, with a texture like nothing else in the world, encased in a thin and only slightly hard shell. Macaroons from LaDuree come in flavors like chocolate, coffee, pistachio, rose, raspberry, caramel etc. But macaroons from Pierre Herme are exotic patchworks of flavor that you absolutely have to eat with your eyes closed and one of those embarrassing facial expressions that makes you look as though you've just seen the light of god or something.
My first macaroon contained avocado cream, banana compote and a delicate inner piece of chocolate. It was golden-yellow and coated in subtly sparkling golden dust that got all over my fingertips and lips. It was delicious, not just the flavor but the texture. Pierre Herme macaroons are generally a lot softer than LaDuree's. The next macaroon was an absurdly rich mix of vanilla, fig, and foie gras. Yes, as in liver. This is one of the pastries that normally costs 8 euro (along with the chocolate and foie gras, which I tried a bite of and didn't like as much as mine). That one was fascinating, but I wouldn't necessarily buy a box of just that flavor. One was enough for me. My third one was eglantine, raspberry and lychee cream, and it was delicately fruity with the fresh rose taste I love (and will miss in the US). The creaminess was indescribably perfect; I actually would buy a box of those.
Being fans of the macaroon in general (and being gross fat Americans), we all shared bites of our orders with each other. Other flavors tried included vanilla and olive oil (it had minute pieces of olive in the shell); chestnut and green tea; jasmine; white truffle and hazel nut (very distinctly mushroom-tasting); apricot, pistachio and parline; salty caramel; something involving passion fruit, and a few others that are blurring together in my mind to make a hazy macaroon dream.
All in all it was a great day, the only down-side being that I won't be in Paris next March 20th to get more free macaroons, and I certainly can't go around buying pastries that cost more than my life. But I did keep the menu we received while standing in line (a much more orderly, quiet line than one sees at your average Free Cone Day), so I suppose I can just read it over whistfully whwnever I'm in the mood for something sweet. Which, with me, is always. Damnit.
In less tasty news, yesterday was spent at the flea markets of Clignancourt, where you can find cheap clothes, shoes, scarves, jewelry, and basically everything else you don't need but would still buy very inexpensively just because it's there. That night was a spring roll dinner party at the apartment my friend Ellen and her boyfriend are renting for the week. Thursday night my momma was in Paris so we went to dinner in the Marais and had those huge crepes from the stand on Blvd. Montparnasse that inevitably get all over your face but are so delicious that you don't care. I know more fun things have happened, but I guess none of them spoke to me like Free Macaroon Day did. Now what does that tell us about my personality? I think it tells us I was meant to be a Parisian.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Too. Much. Cheese.
Sometimes I forget that excessive amounts of dairy often make me feel sick. Last night, for example, when Valerie made a gratin with five different kinds of cheese, I probably should have known that eating a portion as big as my FACE was a bad idea. The gratin was nothing like the au gratin potatoes that come from a box (and are orange, for whatever reason) that we have in the US. Don't get me wrong, I love me some boxed orange god-knows-what, but the gratin last night was amazing, despite the fact that we did actually screw it up. Basically it was a bunch of thinly sliced potatoes layered in a huge pan with melted butter, a ton of garlic, and five kinds of cheese--chevre, gorganzola, camombere, and I don't even know what the other ones were. Once everything was nicely spread in the pan Valerie remembered that part where you're supposed to pre-cook the potatoes (uh, oops?). So since we didn't want it to take, you know, four hours for them to cook in the oven, we did something "tres americain!" And by that I mean we dumped the whole lot in a microwave-safe dish and zapped it for...well, probably way too long and we're all going to get cancer, but whatever. Ten minutes in the oven and we had ourselves some fabulous gratin, served with green salad and bread, and a tarte au citron for dessert (it was store-bought, we're not that cool).
But the moral of this story is that today I spent the two hours of my Literature and Cinema class being absolutely convinced that I was going to throw up. I guess five kinds of cheese really is too much. Plus I probably didn't help myself out too much when I opted for cereal and MILK for breakfast either. Ugh. Unfortunately now the thought of cheese is still making me slightly ill, which narrows down my lunch options by about 75%. Can't have cheese sandwiches or cheese paninis or cheesey pasta or cheese pizza or cheese tarts or even bread and cheese. At least not for a few days, anyway.
Aside from my cheese-induced nausea, I have too much homework. Not really. It's just that we go through periods of having almost no work here, so when they finally give us something to do I feel as though I should be shocked and offended. At the moment I'm too queasy to work on my Madame Bovary expose, which is why I'm updating my blog.
Saturday was spent at Fontainebleau, a little town about 40 minutes outside of Paris with a forest, a chateau that was a royal hunting retreat, and a restaurant that looks like a magical dungeon. We spent the morning hiking through the forest, where they apparently have reinactments of the traditional chasse-a-courre with people in tricorned hats on horseback with a pack of bloodhounds and the works. Although they do actually hunt a boar, so maybe that doesn't count as a reinactment...just an inactment? Well anyway the point is they're insane and I love them. Our tree-loving tour grandpa apparently takes place in these hunts as well as all the other crazy costumed things they do there, and you'd be surprised to know how many there are--parades, balls...BALLS! Hello, I'm jealous, I want to wear a gown and do the venetian waltz around the cobblestoned courtyard of a palace where Marie de Medici lived, please.
Anyway, the tree-loving tour grandpa was super enthusiastic (he even told us some tree jokes which probably would've been funny in English; in French they were just funny because they were tree jokes. Tree grandpa also said he would carry me if I had trouble with the paths, but I declined.
After our lunch in a magical dungeon (lunch wasn't great, but the dungeon was fun) we headed over to the chateau de Fontainebleau. We had a tour guide who led us through the rooms with these weird little audio earpiece things. The most entertaining thing (aside from the part where we took a Single Ladies picture in a BALLROOM) was the rooms in which everything (no really, everything) was covered in the same fabric. Walls, carpet, bedspread, chairs and little draperies would all be exactly the same pattern. Even if that pattern was hideous, which it was a little more often than you'd think. I'm pretty sure that would've given me a headache, so I'm fairly glad I don't.
After the tour we met up with tree grandpa again because he wanted to give us a tour of the park and gardens. It ended up being Mwantuali, Madame Stevens, four of my friends and myself. Everyone else saw the ominous looking grey skies (and tree grandpa, possibly) and booked it back to Paris. It was a good tour though, because tree grandpa really knew his stuff. AT one point he said "Now just imagine that you're Marie de Medici--" and I immediately burst out laughing because of my epic La Reine Margot dream. Then we had a fun talk about Things You Get and Things You Are Not Allowed To Do If You Are The King's Mistress. I decided that I would want to be the king's mistress if I could be Diane de Poitiers, but probably not if I had to be someone else. I could live at Chenonceau but come to Fontainebleau to chillax in the garden labyrinth and hunt some boars. Good times.
Saturday night we had dinner at Ellen's and indulged in some SNL celebrity jeopardy. Which is really hard to explain to your host family in French, so take my advice and don't try it. I did, and I failed, and now they think I'm insane.
But the moral of this story is that today I spent the two hours of my Literature and Cinema class being absolutely convinced that I was going to throw up. I guess five kinds of cheese really is too much. Plus I probably didn't help myself out too much when I opted for cereal and MILK for breakfast either. Ugh. Unfortunately now the thought of cheese is still making me slightly ill, which narrows down my lunch options by about 75%. Can't have cheese sandwiches or cheese paninis or cheesey pasta or cheese pizza or cheese tarts or even bread and cheese. At least not for a few days, anyway.
Aside from my cheese-induced nausea, I have too much homework. Not really. It's just that we go through periods of having almost no work here, so when they finally give us something to do I feel as though I should be shocked and offended. At the moment I'm too queasy to work on my Madame Bovary expose, which is why I'm updating my blog.
Saturday was spent at Fontainebleau, a little town about 40 minutes outside of Paris with a forest, a chateau that was a royal hunting retreat, and a restaurant that looks like a magical dungeon. We spent the morning hiking through the forest, where they apparently have reinactments of the traditional chasse-a-courre with people in tricorned hats on horseback with a pack of bloodhounds and the works. Although they do actually hunt a boar, so maybe that doesn't count as a reinactment...just an inactment? Well anyway the point is they're insane and I love them. Our tree-loving tour grandpa apparently takes place in these hunts as well as all the other crazy costumed things they do there, and you'd be surprised to know how many there are--parades, balls...BALLS! Hello, I'm jealous, I want to wear a gown and do the venetian waltz around the cobblestoned courtyard of a palace where Marie de Medici lived, please.
Anyway, the tree-loving tour grandpa was super enthusiastic (he even told us some tree jokes which probably would've been funny in English; in French they were just funny because they were tree jokes. Tree grandpa also said he would carry me if I had trouble with the paths, but I declined.
After our lunch in a magical dungeon (lunch wasn't great, but the dungeon was fun) we headed over to the chateau de Fontainebleau. We had a tour guide who led us through the rooms with these weird little audio earpiece things. The most entertaining thing (aside from the part where we took a Single Ladies picture in a BALLROOM) was the rooms in which everything (no really, everything) was covered in the same fabric. Walls, carpet, bedspread, chairs and little draperies would all be exactly the same pattern. Even if that pattern was hideous, which it was a little more often than you'd think. I'm pretty sure that would've given me a headache, so I'm fairly glad I don't.
After the tour we met up with tree grandpa again because he wanted to give us a tour of the park and gardens. It ended up being Mwantuali, Madame Stevens, four of my friends and myself. Everyone else saw the ominous looking grey skies (and tree grandpa, possibly) and booked it back to Paris. It was a good tour though, because tree grandpa really knew his stuff. AT one point he said "Now just imagine that you're Marie de Medici--" and I immediately burst out laughing because of my epic La Reine Margot dream. Then we had a fun talk about Things You Get and Things You Are Not Allowed To Do If You Are The King's Mistress. I decided that I would want to be the king's mistress if I could be Diane de Poitiers, but probably not if I had to be someone else. I could live at Chenonceau but come to Fontainebleau to chillax in the garden labyrinth and hunt some boars. Good times.
Saturday night we had dinner at Ellen's and indulged in some SNL celebrity jeopardy. Which is really hard to explain to your host family in French, so take my advice and don't try it. I did, and I failed, and now they think I'm insane.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Ate so much gelato that I got real sick / Shout-out to the pope and my catholics
The subject line of this entry is taken from the theme song (or lyrical ballad, as you please) Leah and I wrote to commemorate our trip to Italy. I will not reproduce the lyrics in full, first of all because their brilliance might make your heads explode, and second because they just aren't as funny when I'm not singing them to the tune of Beyonce's "Single Ladies." And dancing. Which is actually the funniest part.
But, to start from the beginning...
Leah, Ellen, Kristin and I left for our epic Italian adventure last Tuesday. We took the metro, the RER, and then the bus to Beauvais (you know, the airport that is not as serious as CDG or Orly, thus making it the third best Parisian airport. Comforting!). Our flight for Pisa left (sort of) on time and got us there at late o'clock. We walked about 15 minutes to our hotel where we proceeded to get basically no sleep. But there was free breakfast in the morning, and we were able to catch a bus to see the leaning tower. I will admit that it wasn't nearly as leany as I thought it would be, and I actually thought the building next to it was a lot more interesting, but we took the necessary kicking-over-the-tower, holding-up-the-tower, and dancing-to-Single-Ladies (don't judge me) photos in front of it. Then we headed to the train station to hop a train to Venice and, what with our excellent timing, we only had to wait about 10 minutes. It was on this ride that Leah and I, instead of observing the countryside, wrote our traveling song. I'm pretty sure the Italians all around us were sick of our shit by the end of the ride (or rather, fifteen minutes into it), but they never complained. At least not in any language I speak.
We arrived in Venice in the early afternoon, and I'm pretty sure nothing has ever smelled so good to me in my whole life. I've heard Venice smells awful in the summer and, while I have no trouble imagining how unpleasant that must be, in late February it's all salty-fresh and delicious. We boarded a boat bus--way more efficient and just plain AWESOME than I thought it would be--that took us to our hotel, about an hour away on the other side of the city. It was gorgeous and I took crooked pictures of everything (literally) I saw along the way. Venice was something I could never really imagine beforehand, even having seen pictures and heard about it, so being there was kind of like seeing something I never fully believed existed. Like a unicorn...with more gelato. Or a unicorn made of gelato.
Our hotel in Venice was great once we found it. The city will lead you down a miniscule alley way between two buildings only to present you either with a dead end, or several even smaller alleys to choose from, snaking off along buildings that were definitely not built with regard to right angles or any architectural conventions so normal as that. I could have walked in circles for hours and had no idea, but at least it would've been a lovely few hours. We spent the afternoon wandering around canals and bridges, eating gelato and coveting murano glass jewelry and notebooks. We saw Saint Marc's square and heard the church bells, and contemplated the gondola rides (but 80 euro is a bit ridiculous). At one point we ended up in a shop selling beautiful leather-bound notebooks, run by an adorable old woman who had a ball babbling at us in Italian even though we obviously had no idea what she was saying. Kristin bought a notebook and as we were leaving she made us wait, took out four pens (the wooden kind with the metal tips you have to dip in ink), packaged them up all individually and gave them to us. She even took a photo for us and was generally the cutest Italian fairy godmother anyone could ask for. We didn't know how to properly thank her in Italian, so we just smiled really, really wide and hoped she got the message. She probably did, or else thought we were a bunch of crazy people attending some kind of idiot convention in the floating city.
After getting thoroughly lost we ended up having dinner in a little pizzaria near the hotel. Our waiter was this Filipino guy who, I must say, did a superlative job of representing my people. He kept trying to convince us to "go to discotheque!" with him and the cook, who he called "Mr. Olympian, because his muscles are so big from making pizza!" Mr. Olympian apparently had a crush on Leah, and the Filipino apparently just wanted some disco buddies, because he literally asked us every time he came to the table. And by that I mean on every trip to and from the kitchen, whether he was bringing us anything or not. "Yes," he told us, "we go to discotheque weekends! You know, Friday, Saturday, Sunday..." I said, "But it's Wednesday!" And as if that was completely normal and acceptable he said "Of course! Wednesday too!" So if you ever wanted to know what real Venetians do, I can tell you that they go to the discotheque. Every night. Another gem from that conversation was the part where he told us he was Filipino. Obviously I said "Me too!" to which he promptly replied, "Are you sure?" And that was my night in Venice.
The next morning after a breakfast provided by the hotel (consisting of croissant-in-a-bag's, breakfast "cookies" and orange juiceboxes) we headed back to the train station by way of the water bus. We had a slight fiasco in which the woman at the ticket counter informed us that the reason our train wasn't listed was because it was leaving from a different station, and that we wouldn't be able to make it there in time. Luckily she just switched us to the next train leaving from the station we were actually at. Every trip has to have one screw-up, and that was a pretty minor one as far as screw-ups go.
Our hotel in Florence was just 5 minutes from the train station and was in fact an apartment complete with kitchen, balcony and view of the skyline with the Duomo smack in the middle of it. It smelled funny, but we got over it pretty quick. We had lunch at a place Kristin knew which was also really close by--truffle-oil pasta was a good way to start off my Florence experience. Florence as a whole consisted of a lot of walking through cobble-stoned streets, fawning over paper stores (oh, the stationary!) and leather goods, and obviously eating as much gelato as my non-milk-drinking, slightly lactose intolerant body could handle. Luckily Kristin knew all the best gelato places, none of that tacky crap sculpted into the shape of flowers and pumped full of air. My favorite flavor was either cookies or rocotta (which I'm obviously spelling wrong, but whatever), closely followed by peanut butter.
It was also definitely an art overload, not quite (but almost) to the point of Stendhal Syndrome--something that apparently causes people who come to Florence to immediately get overwhelmed by the massive amounts of pretty all over the place, and faint. That would've been fun in a fabulous, melodramatic, period-piece sort of way, but alas.
We went to the Academia on Friday to visit Michelangelo's David. Mostly I remember that his butt was beautiful and I wasn't allowed to take a picture of it, but I'm sure it was also a magnificent work of art. But...the butt! I mean, I've never been one for butts, but (haha, but) you just have to see it to believe it. How many times did I just write butt?
Anyway, we also spent a whole lot of time wandering around the Uffizi, where we saw a ton of Botticelli and Jesus (of him, not by him, obviously), among other things. I swear I appreciate art, I just have a hard time differentiating between the eight hundred and seventy two scenes of Jesus being crucified, washing peoples feet, pulling fish out of who-knows-where, or generally doing Jesus-y things, that I saw in Florence.
We also saw several gorgeous churches, my favorite of which was Santa Croce, where Kristin gave us a fabulous art history lesson (definitely go to Florence with art history people, it'll make you feel very cultured). Then we visited the monestary of Saint Marco where we saw Fra Angelico's fresco of the annunciation (the one where Gabriel has what look like peacock wings) which actually was absolutely beautiful. We saw a ton of tiny monks' rooms with really small windows and really big Jesus frescoes--I think I would've preferred the reverse, but I guess that's why I'm not a monk. Also because I'd just flounce around singing "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?" and all the other monks would hate me, but that's irrelevant.
We spent an afternoon in the gardens of the Medici palace (one of them, anyway) where we imitated statues, ran around like the annoying american tourists we were, and took some seriously magnificent jumping-off-of-things pictures. After that (and on several other occasions) we had fun bartering with the leather sellers. They'll tell you they have to get money to buy milk for the bambinos, but we used our super team tactics to get them to lower their prices in time. And by super team tactics what I mean is we stood around and scowled and pointed out everything wrong with the bag until the seller was so annoyed all he really wanted to do was get rid of us. Hey, it's harder than it sounds.
But of everything, I think--actually, I know--that the food was my favorite part. Truffle-oil pasta and pizza, pear and cheese ravioli, spaghetti carbonara (with artichokes!), racotta and spinach ravioli, and sausage that was actually spicy, unlike anything in France. We went to a restaurant on Saturday night which is apparently run by a Hapsburg prince who just really likes to cook. When you come in they give you free champagne and apparatifs (presumably because Hapsburg princes aren't in it for the money). The platter included liver pate, zukini stuffed with something amazing, eggplant, several delicious cheese things, bologna (a fancy kind that people actually want to eat though) and a few mysterious but very tasty vegetables. There was much more, but if I think about it any longer I'll get hungry, and it's a good three hours till dinner time here in Paris.
All in all it was a marvelous vacation, even though come Sunday we all got home (very late) nursing colds. I guess actually getting sleep before having splendid Italian adventures for 15 hours straight every day is probably a good idea, but we didn't think of that at the time. I need a vacation to recuperate from my vacation, but it was definitely worth it.
In other news, Valerie is home from the hospital! I was definitely feeling the lack of crazy French people in my life. Not to say that Edouard isn't crazy enough on his own, but you know. So I'm sick, but life is good.
Ciao bella, until next time.
But, to start from the beginning...
Leah, Ellen, Kristin and I left for our epic Italian adventure last Tuesday. We took the metro, the RER, and then the bus to Beauvais (you know, the airport that is not as serious as CDG or Orly, thus making it the third best Parisian airport. Comforting!). Our flight for Pisa left (sort of) on time and got us there at late o'clock. We walked about 15 minutes to our hotel where we proceeded to get basically no sleep. But there was free breakfast in the morning, and we were able to catch a bus to see the leaning tower. I will admit that it wasn't nearly as leany as I thought it would be, and I actually thought the building next to it was a lot more interesting, but we took the necessary kicking-over-the-tower, holding-up-the-tower, and dancing-to-Single-Ladies (don't judge me) photos in front of it. Then we headed to the train station to hop a train to Venice and, what with our excellent timing, we only had to wait about 10 minutes. It was on this ride that Leah and I, instead of observing the countryside, wrote our traveling song. I'm pretty sure the Italians all around us were sick of our shit by the end of the ride (or rather, fifteen minutes into it), but they never complained. At least not in any language I speak.
We arrived in Venice in the early afternoon, and I'm pretty sure nothing has ever smelled so good to me in my whole life. I've heard Venice smells awful in the summer and, while I have no trouble imagining how unpleasant that must be, in late February it's all salty-fresh and delicious. We boarded a boat bus--way more efficient and just plain AWESOME than I thought it would be--that took us to our hotel, about an hour away on the other side of the city. It was gorgeous and I took crooked pictures of everything (literally) I saw along the way. Venice was something I could never really imagine beforehand, even having seen pictures and heard about it, so being there was kind of like seeing something I never fully believed existed. Like a unicorn...with more gelato. Or a unicorn made of gelato.
Our hotel in Venice was great once we found it. The city will lead you down a miniscule alley way between two buildings only to present you either with a dead end, or several even smaller alleys to choose from, snaking off along buildings that were definitely not built with regard to right angles or any architectural conventions so normal as that. I could have walked in circles for hours and had no idea, but at least it would've been a lovely few hours. We spent the afternoon wandering around canals and bridges, eating gelato and coveting murano glass jewelry and notebooks. We saw Saint Marc's square and heard the church bells, and contemplated the gondola rides (but 80 euro is a bit ridiculous). At one point we ended up in a shop selling beautiful leather-bound notebooks, run by an adorable old woman who had a ball babbling at us in Italian even though we obviously had no idea what she was saying. Kristin bought a notebook and as we were leaving she made us wait, took out four pens (the wooden kind with the metal tips you have to dip in ink), packaged them up all individually and gave them to us. She even took a photo for us and was generally the cutest Italian fairy godmother anyone could ask for. We didn't know how to properly thank her in Italian, so we just smiled really, really wide and hoped she got the message. She probably did, or else thought we were a bunch of crazy people attending some kind of idiot convention in the floating city.
After getting thoroughly lost we ended up having dinner in a little pizzaria near the hotel. Our waiter was this Filipino guy who, I must say, did a superlative job of representing my people. He kept trying to convince us to "go to discotheque!" with him and the cook, who he called "Mr. Olympian, because his muscles are so big from making pizza!" Mr. Olympian apparently had a crush on Leah, and the Filipino apparently just wanted some disco buddies, because he literally asked us every time he came to the table. And by that I mean on every trip to and from the kitchen, whether he was bringing us anything or not. "Yes," he told us, "we go to discotheque weekends! You know, Friday, Saturday, Sunday..." I said, "But it's Wednesday!" And as if that was completely normal and acceptable he said "Of course! Wednesday too!" So if you ever wanted to know what real Venetians do, I can tell you that they go to the discotheque. Every night. Another gem from that conversation was the part where he told us he was Filipino. Obviously I said "Me too!" to which he promptly replied, "Are you sure?" And that was my night in Venice.
The next morning after a breakfast provided by the hotel (consisting of croissant-in-a-bag's, breakfast "cookies" and orange juiceboxes) we headed back to the train station by way of the water bus. We had a slight fiasco in which the woman at the ticket counter informed us that the reason our train wasn't listed was because it was leaving from a different station, and that we wouldn't be able to make it there in time. Luckily she just switched us to the next train leaving from the station we were actually at. Every trip has to have one screw-up, and that was a pretty minor one as far as screw-ups go.
Our hotel in Florence was just 5 minutes from the train station and was in fact an apartment complete with kitchen, balcony and view of the skyline with the Duomo smack in the middle of it. It smelled funny, but we got over it pretty quick. We had lunch at a place Kristin knew which was also really close by--truffle-oil pasta was a good way to start off my Florence experience. Florence as a whole consisted of a lot of walking through cobble-stoned streets, fawning over paper stores (oh, the stationary!) and leather goods, and obviously eating as much gelato as my non-milk-drinking, slightly lactose intolerant body could handle. Luckily Kristin knew all the best gelato places, none of that tacky crap sculpted into the shape of flowers and pumped full of air. My favorite flavor was either cookies or rocotta (which I'm obviously spelling wrong, but whatever), closely followed by peanut butter.
It was also definitely an art overload, not quite (but almost) to the point of Stendhal Syndrome--something that apparently causes people who come to Florence to immediately get overwhelmed by the massive amounts of pretty all over the place, and faint. That would've been fun in a fabulous, melodramatic, period-piece sort of way, but alas.
We went to the Academia on Friday to visit Michelangelo's David. Mostly I remember that his butt was beautiful and I wasn't allowed to take a picture of it, but I'm sure it was also a magnificent work of art. But...the butt! I mean, I've never been one for butts, but (haha, but) you just have to see it to believe it. How many times did I just write butt?
Anyway, we also spent a whole lot of time wandering around the Uffizi, where we saw a ton of Botticelli and Jesus (of him, not by him, obviously), among other things. I swear I appreciate art, I just have a hard time differentiating between the eight hundred and seventy two scenes of Jesus being crucified, washing peoples feet, pulling fish out of who-knows-where, or generally doing Jesus-y things, that I saw in Florence.
We also saw several gorgeous churches, my favorite of which was Santa Croce, where Kristin gave us a fabulous art history lesson (definitely go to Florence with art history people, it'll make you feel very cultured). Then we visited the monestary of Saint Marco where we saw Fra Angelico's fresco of the annunciation (the one where Gabriel has what look like peacock wings) which actually was absolutely beautiful. We saw a ton of tiny monks' rooms with really small windows and really big Jesus frescoes--I think I would've preferred the reverse, but I guess that's why I'm not a monk. Also because I'd just flounce around singing "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?" and all the other monks would hate me, but that's irrelevant.
We spent an afternoon in the gardens of the Medici palace (one of them, anyway) where we imitated statues, ran around like the annoying american tourists we were, and took some seriously magnificent jumping-off-of-things pictures. After that (and on several other occasions) we had fun bartering with the leather sellers. They'll tell you they have to get money to buy milk for the bambinos, but we used our super team tactics to get them to lower their prices in time. And by super team tactics what I mean is we stood around and scowled and pointed out everything wrong with the bag until the seller was so annoyed all he really wanted to do was get rid of us. Hey, it's harder than it sounds.
But of everything, I think--actually, I know--that the food was my favorite part. Truffle-oil pasta and pizza, pear and cheese ravioli, spaghetti carbonara (with artichokes!), racotta and spinach ravioli, and sausage that was actually spicy, unlike anything in France. We went to a restaurant on Saturday night which is apparently run by a Hapsburg prince who just really likes to cook. When you come in they give you free champagne and apparatifs (presumably because Hapsburg princes aren't in it for the money). The platter included liver pate, zukini stuffed with something amazing, eggplant, several delicious cheese things, bologna (a fancy kind that people actually want to eat though) and a few mysterious but very tasty vegetables. There was much more, but if I think about it any longer I'll get hungry, and it's a good three hours till dinner time here in Paris.
All in all it was a marvelous vacation, even though come Sunday we all got home (very late) nursing colds. I guess actually getting sleep before having splendid Italian adventures for 15 hours straight every day is probably a good idea, but we didn't think of that at the time. I need a vacation to recuperate from my vacation, but it was definitely worth it.
In other news, Valerie is home from the hospital! I was definitely feeling the lack of crazy French people in my life. Not to say that Edouard isn't crazy enough on his own, but you know. So I'm sick, but life is good.
Ciao bella, until next time.
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