Dixit, Dixit: One couple's strange, exotic journey from Florence to Cappadocia

Of course, there are many things we miss about Florence:

• The castle-like doors of our apartment on Via della Vigna Vecchia.
• The warm and welcoming owner of Osteria de Benci with the Elvis side-burns.
• The rooftop cafe at Rinascente in Piazza de la Republica where we had our Italian lessons with Lucia.
• Lucia.
• La Nazione newsstand near the Bargello Museum, where Amol bought the Herald Tribune in the mornings.
• Cappucino and hot chocolate and Scrabble at various caffes in various piazzas across the city. Amol is becoming an expert on scoring the 50-point bonus for using all his letters. I think he has an unfair advantage because he just finished reading "Word Freak" about the underworld of competitive Scrabble.
• The super rich hot chocolate that we discovered only towards the end of our trip. It was especially good at Paskowski's in Piazza de la Republica and at Rivoire in Piazza de la Signoria.
• The open-air museum-ness of the city, which our friend Fio pointed out.
• Random accordion players. I wonder if locals find them to be a nuisance. I loved them.
• Buying soymilk and bananas from our market. Somehow, buying groceries in Europe is more fun than at home. Unless we go to the farmer's market.
• The Paperback Exchange bookstore. A small group of American women would sit at the back of the store and try to register any unregistered Americans before the upcoming election. I admired their dedication and good posture.
• Even the loud, inexplicable construction noise outside our apartment in the morning.

Fortunately, we have a good distraction from missing Florence too terribly. Turkey has been wonderful. Beautiful and astounding. Some of the things we've loved:

• The exterior of the Blue Mosque. Amol is mesmerized by it and wants to build a house in its image.
• The interior of the Aya Sofya.
• Dubb, indian restaurant. Incredible view of the Aya Sofya from the 4th floor terrace.
• The mix of East and West on Istiklal street. We saw a very old woman pulling an utterly enormous load of boxes on a handcart, uphill, in front of a Starbucks. Istiklal has 3 Starbucks.
• The landscape of Cappadocia. It's really like we're on another planet. I can't believe that this place exists in the same world that I have been living in all this time.
• The hamams (Turkish Baths). They are kind of like saunas, but without the steam, but with heated marble benches that make you super warm and relaxed. (Julie and Jason, you'd love it!)
• The "British Orientalist Paintings" exhibit at the Pera Museum in Istanbul.
• The dog that followed us on our hike through the Rose Valley. We named him Blue, after Amol's new favorite building. We all felt very betrayed when he abandoned us for another group with better snacks. Our friend Mike was particularly devastated.

Ciao, Firenze!

After 4 awesome weeks in Florence, it's time to move on to our next stop -- Turkey. But before we leave, here is a random list of things I learned this past month......these are in no particular order and may only be interesting to me.

Hot chocolate in Florence is VERY rich.
The Mona Lisa was actually painted in Florence.
Pallavi and I would like to come back to Tuscany and visit Siena again during the Palio (big horse race run twice a year in the main town square).
Florence, like any other city, has residents that love it, and others that are very much down on it.
There isn't enough singing in US sports.
Evidence of a massive flood in 1966 can still be seen throughout Florence.
The word 'duomo' means cathedral.....and not all duomos are created equal.
Boston sports fans = ugly Americans.
Tuscan scenery is even more breathtaking with Andrea Bocelli playing on the car stereo.
As a local pointed out to us, Florence is basically one big open-air museum.
As boring as it may sound, my favorite flavor of gelato is chocolate.
I like the TV show 'House', and I look forward to watching it when we return to the US.
Florence is not a car-friendly city.
Even though I thoroughly enjoyed all the pizza we had here, my favorite type is still typical New York style pizza.
There's a difference between tourists and travelers. I think it comes down to the difference between doing and experiencing. I think the amount of time we had here allowed us to be travelers. My gut tells me that we'll be tourists in many of the places we'll be visiting over the next 3 months.

Thank you Florence! We can't wait to see you again.
Ciao for now.....talk to you from Turkey!

Our Fi-riends in Firenze

Here are some of the folks that helped to make Florence feel like our home away from home these past 4 weeks:

Our friend and Italian tutor, Lucia, with her boyfriend Angelo, and Angelo's 6 year-old son Samuele....in case you're wondering, Samuele doesn't own a turban....the Indian restaurant loaned it to him for this picture. Thanks to Lucia's teachings, we are now quite comfortable talking about ourselves (Io sono uomo di affari -- I am a businessman) and asking others where they are from (Di dove sei?). I'd say we're fluent.

This is Francesco, the manager at the sports bar we went to every Sunday to watch live NFL games. By the 3rd week, he knew Pallavi was a Diet Coke type of gal.

Here's Gonzalo (or, as Pallavi liked to call him, 'The Gonzalvo'). He's our favorite bartender at Moyo, the bar we went to most often.

This is Shyam Yadev. We didn't exactly befriend him, but he was our waiter at an Indian restaurant called 'Salaam Bombay'. He made quite an impression on us with his highly-opinionated views on Italians, Indians, New York City, and the Swiss landscape. Definitely a character. Also, standing next to him made me feel very tall.

I present to you Fio and Filipo. Our friend Gene in Minneapolis hooked us up with these two colleagues of his here in Florence. We had a terrific lunch with them, got the inside scoop on Florence, as well as the Italian scoop on Gene. Good times.

Our Latest Visitor in Florence

On Tuesday night, Firenze rolled out its red carpet for Spike Lee, who was in town for the premiere of his new movie, Miracle at Santa Ana, which was set in Tuscany. We went to the theater early, got a good spot along the ropes, and waited....and waited. Finally, Spike 'did the right thing' and showed up with his family......here are a couple pix as he approached the theater. Also, here's a picture of Pallavi working the red carpet like only she can.

While we didn't actually get an invite to the private screening of the movie, Spike did acknowledge me with a chin nod when I yelled, 'Go Knicks!'

Fiorentina 1, Genoa 0

On Saturday night, Pallavi and I went to a Fiorentina (Florence's home team) soccer match vs. Genoa.....awesome!! The 40,000+ fans that packed the stadium were festive the entire game, singing, chanting, and of course, yelling at the officials. It's a shame we didn't understand what they were yelling.....it sounded quite colorful. Two other things we found quite interesting were that the Genoa fans were all in one CAGED section separate from the Fiorentina fans, and that the locals displayed their team spirit by wearing team scarves......only the Americans in the crowd (myself included) were wearing team jerseys. So it was quite easy to spot the Americans.

Here is a picture of the two of us in the Stadium, as well as a video clip that I took immediately after Fiorentina scored the only goal of the night -- not the best camerawork, but hopefully you'll get the idea.

il dolce far niente

I can't think of any place where people are more into ice cream. Wherever we go, there are hoards of people eating out of little cups with little spoons. There are 3 gelaterias on every street, at least. We usually just pick one per street. Amol has been sticking to cioccolato while I've had mostly nocciola (hazelnut) and nocciolato (hazelnut and chocolate -- basically, cold Nutella.) Sometimes I have stracciatella (cookies and cream, i think) -- but that's just because I like to say "stracciatella.") We've heard from a few sources that the best gelateria in Florence is this place called Vivoli. Vivoli is -- fortunately or unfortunately -- right outside our apartment.

I've decided I could never live in Europe because of all the smoking.

I'm happy that I've learned some key food words: vegetariana, decaffeinato, and pane integral (whole wheat bread). Raka, the Rick Steve's phrase book is a life-saver!

Today I learned that Amol loves raisins.

This American couple we met here (Matt & Sam from Milwaukee) said it was impossible to cross the street here because of all the scooters. Amol and i agreed: if they went to India, they would surely die.

There's this phrase here: il dolce far niente. the sweetness of doing nothing.

Prego!

One of our missions here is to figure out all the different uses of the word 'prego'. We know it means 'you're welcome', but it's also used in a lot of other contexts -- ready, ok, come in, ???. If anybody has any insights, we're all ears. Also, I hypothesize that the tourists-to-locals ratio in Florence is higher than in any other city perhaps in the world. It's just a hypothesis....but I think I'm onto something.

Here are a few pictures that capture our daily routine, which consists of lots of walking, hanging out in cafes, perhaps checking out a museum, and Pallavi beating me in Scrabble (she is, after all, a word person).

Firenze -- Settling In...

It's been a terrific first few days here in Florence. Pallavi hooked us up with a phenomenal apartment, in the heart of the Santa Croce area, which is one of the livelier areas of the city. Above is a picture of Pallavi in front of our apartment entrance.

Since we're here for a month, we've been pacing ourselves in terms of sightseeing. Above are a few of the sights we've taken in so far (to be honest, the city is small enough that it's hard NOT to see a bunch of sights just in the course of walking around aimlessly) -- church of Santa Croce (one block from our apartment), view of the Ponte Vecchio area at night, Pallavi on the Ponte Vecchio bridge in the evening, and Mr. David himself.....this picture is the result of us being told that no photos are allowed and me trying to cover David's private parts with a Terrible Towel.

Benvenuti a Firenze!

Our first night in Florence....Pallavi's first gelato. This is going to be a good month.