Florence and the Ragus

After saying farewell to G, we met up with Kevin’s friend Tristan to head to Florence. Another example of how small the world is: I knew of Tristan when I was in 6^th grade because we played in the same basketball league, me being much younger. I didn’t actually talk to him until a few years back when we played in a church league together, but crazy how small Seattle is, and I guess Italy. Tristan was working in Poland so Kevin told him to hang out with us for a week or so in Italy. First stop: Florence.

We got into Florence around dinner time, so we dropped off our bags and went searching for food. Our hostel was right around the corner from a piazza, so we found a nice little outdoor spot to eat. Kevin emailed a future UCLA classmate that was also in Florence to meet up with us, so she joined us for dinner and Tristan and I proceeded to watch Kevin make eyes at her all night (not really, but there hadn’t been much romance on my trip, so someone had to make eyes at someone at least once). I got a delicious eggplant parmesan while watching a street performer swallow knives. We ended the night like we did every other night: gelato.

I didn’t know much about Florence before I visited except that the David was there, and they had good food. Since the Galleria dell Accedemia (where the David is located) was closed for the day, we decided to wander and see where that took us. Our first stop was a gigantic church, the Santa Maria del Fiore Cathedral; only the 4^th largest cathedral in the world. NBD. It was pretty amazing because it had a beautifully painted dome. The dome is a big deal because the builder used some sort of new technique that had never been done before. I just thought it was pretty. After the cathedral, we finished our morning at the Bargello Museum, famous for their innumerous sculptures.

Santa Maria del Fiore Cathedral.

The beautiful Duomo.

Kevin really taking time to soak in all of the statues.

Lunch time! We stopped by a place called Trattoria Mario, maybe our favorite eatery in all of Italy. Trip Advisor, you did us right with that recommendation. It was a super small hole in the wall place that could probably fit 20 people. Luckily for us, we got there a little early, so we got a seat. Their menu was super simple, but the superstar was the ragu. Super simple flat lasagna noodles covered in the best meat sauce ever created. I think it was made with ground unicorn or something. Anyways, we each got a meat dish as well (pork, chicken, steak) to round out our meal. So good.

The knee-buckling ragu.

After our euphoric meal, we decided to just walk around and relax at a few piazzas. We stayed at one particular piazza for a few hours talking about god knows what. What I can remember from the conversation is that we couldn’t for the life of us figure out the names of the following movies: Adjustment Bureau and Source Code. We had seen Source Code posters literally everywhere, but since it wasn’t in English, we couldn’t remember the name. That bugged us and yes, we fruitfully used the rest of the afternoon to rack our brains over the answer. In all seriousness, sitting in the piazza doing nothing but talk nonsense was uber enjoyable. I think we were going from place to place so much it was nice just to stop and do nothing.

Dinner time! But before dinner, of course we had to get gelato. Overall, Florence probably had the best gelato we had. We ate at four different places and three were amazing (Corroze and Carraia were the best). Really good flavors and all of the gelato places had whipped cream. Whipped cream, people! The hostel owner recommended a small little place for dinner called Il Contadino that served whatever was fresh for that day. Again a really simple and tasty meal. To end the night, we headed to Piazza Santa Maria Novella to people watch and dribble and shoot fake basketballs.

Piazza Santa Maria Novella 

The next morning, we decided to brave the insanely long line to see the David since we were leaving that afternoon to head to Pisa. Three hours to move a block and a half, but seeing the David was so worth it. Surprised me actually. The rest of the museum was meh, but the David was so massive and impressively sculpted. I hadn’t stared at a sculpture that long since the last time George Clooney was on the cover of Us Weekly. Creepy? Yea, creepy.

Look how small that girl is!

Before we left Florence, we had some unfinished business. We stopped by Trattoria Mario one more time to get a taste of that crack-laced ragu before heading off to our next adventure in Pisa.

One for the road.