A Brief Florence Redux

I just returned from my sojourn in Florence with Carla--brief though it was, I had such a good time. She lives outside the city center right now, so we just took the bus into town to have dinner at a bar called Kitsch, which is a little ways past the synagogue and not that far from where we used to live. The Italian tradition of the aperitivo dinner is well-beloved in Florence: you pay 7 or 8 euro for a cocktail and then it's an all-you-can eat buffet. While we lived there we went a few times to Colle Bereto, (which charged a ridiculous 9 euro) but its buffet was definitely more upscale, sophisticated fare; besides that one time with the awesome lasagna, it was never that great, but Kitsch had an amazing spread of food. I couldn't even have identified half the stuff I was eating, but I liked all of it, except for some seafood gnocchi (blech) and the couscous, which was regrettably really dry. Of course, liking everything led to me and Carla both getting two heaping plates of food and then wandering around the city groaning because our stomachs hurt--so badly, in fact, that we stopped at a pharmacy and contemplated paying 9 euro for the Italian version of Tums, but we decided that it was a just punishment to suffer for eating too much. Anyway, our night consisted of wandering around the city, which was pretty much deserted for a Saturday, and then returning to her apartment and watching French Kiss, which is the movie I associate with my Florence experience, par excellence, and I had forgotten how much of the dialogue I had memorized (from our many, many viewings of that film) until both of us started yelling out the lines.

Beyond walking around, I didn't actually do anything in Florence, which I don't regret, because I was literally just there, and like I realized two weeks ago, I've kind of done everything I wanted to there for now. Besides, it was more important to just spend time with Carla, as she's been going through some rocky times recently job-wise, and Justin's off in Malta doing Maltese things. Luckily, she's planning to come home next July for a family reunion on the Cape, so I know when I will see her next, but I was glad that I happened to be in the same country at the same time that she needed some company!

In conclusion: "Beautiful! Gorgeous! Wish you were here!"