The Perfect Day in Paris

On a slightly overcast day in Paris, my friend and I jumped on the metro and headed toward Montmartre. Eager for a day of adventuring, our enthusiasm was briefly halted by a Metro police duo demanding to see our metro tickets in order to get on the train. In all my local friend’s two months in Paris, he had never run into the rumored Metro patrollers  but on this day, the day I snuck through the bar behind him as he swiped his student pass, they were out in full force. Forty euro later (no lost-ticket-excuses, begging, or bartering to a lower price allowed) we took our very expensive Metro ride to Montmarte. Lesson learned: buy your metro tickets. 

And bus tickets. 

And train tickets (side note: For train tickets don’t forget to stamp your ticket in the yellow box in all the train stations, they will charge you 40 euro also. I weaseled my way out of that one for only 5 but I am told I was lucky). 

Anyway, on to Montmartre. Montmartre is a small artist colony set back on winding streets and squares behind the grand Sacré-Cœur. The Sacré-Cœur is beautiful white, domed, towering Roman Catholic Church that sits on the highest point of Paris’ Right Bank, looking over the city ethereally.

 

We bought a cheap bottle of Riesling (which is nonexistent in Italy) and pack of foreign-looking candy and climbed the steps that lead up to the church. We stopped and sat at top of the stairs, split our bottle of wine, tried all the various candies curiously, and watched all the different performers who had also made the climb to the steps, hoping to earn a little money from those who had gathered to enjoy the view. There were several guitar playing, croaky singers, hip-hop dancers, and one man who juggled a soccer ball all the way up a lamp post. We thought this must have been a once in a lifetime event to see until I looked it up online and he seems to be quite famous. But unlike all the videos I found, he did not mess up once when we were watching. Take a look!

 

After a glass of wine and some entertainment, we headed back behind the church on a tiny cobblestone road laden with cafes and vintage art vendors until we found ourselves in a square. The square was surrounded with quaint buildings adorned with flower boxes and bustling with artists, families, and friends meeting to have a drink at one of the bordering cafés. We meandered through the easels that had art displayed to sell on one side and the artist absorbed in their next piece on the other. We admired the art, laughed at some of the caricatures being done and spotted two elderly French men wrapped in scarves and old tweed coats moving their pieces across an ancient wooden chessboard behind an easel. We stopped to watch until the game was finished and snagged a prime seat looking out on the square under the awning of a friendly café right as it started to drizzle. 

 

We sat there for hours until it grew dark, having cappuccinos, crepes, and trying the French specialty: hot wine (it’s delicious). When the square was almost completely packed up of all its artwork and the hustle and bustle that went along with it, we wove our way back down the stone steps to continue our adventure elsewhere.

 

What's for Breakfast?

Here in Florence, and most of Europe for that matter, breakfast is not a big deal. Italians will pick up a pastry and a cappuccino on the way to work or just down an espresso and call it a morning. 

At home, my parents made sure every morning before school that we had time to all sit around the kitchen table and share my dads poached eggs, bacon, and orange juice, or one of my mom's pies or tarts. Being a creature of habit, the Italian way was hard to adjust to.

I quickly became addicted to gulping down espressos and cappuccinos more out of a way to pass time in between classes than the actual need to wake up to the point that I couldn't keep my eyes open unless I had three espressos. Being tired all the time, I would barely get up in time for class and have to snag a pastry on the way to class. Now was I not only addicted to caffeine but I was demolishing large amounts of Nutella wrapped in buttery dough every morning. Not exactly healthy, and I would spend about 4 euros every morning on breakfast...a total of 28 a week.

After my parents visited they got me in the routine of buying yogurt, fruit, nuts and berries, and making my own breakfast every morning. I also started drinking tea instead of decending the slippery slope to a complete caffeine addiction. This new routine only cost me 5 euros total a week or less. I recently bought a plane ticket to Paris for 7 euros and a ticket to Malta for 12. Think of all the places you can go by just eating in!

The Coffee Pot: USA vs. Italy

 

Italians do not own coffee makers like one might find in Starbucks or in our kitchens. Instead they have espresso makers, the device pictured to the right. Instead of brewing a pot of coffee, this espresso maker will brew one or a few shots of espresso. 

To use it:

1. Screw off the top from the bottom and take the funnel type device out of the bottom. 

2. Fill the funnel device with crushed espresso beans (adjust by how strong you want your drink) 

3. Fill the bottom cup like device with as much water as you want to brew espresso.

4. Put the funnel-like device back into the bottom so that the tube is sticking into the water. 

5. Screw the top back on and place over a lit stove

6. Leave for about 5 minutes (depending on the heat of the stove) or until it begins to bubble over the top, then you know it's quite done.

Ecco espresso!

My Tuscan Adventure

Sounds perfect right? Not so fast. 

This past weekend I had my first taste of attempting to venture into the unknown Tuscan countryside with nothing but a map in hand (one of Florence, not of Tuscany...unhelpful) and a reservation at an Agurturismo with a woman who barely spoke English. First of all, you are probably wondering what an Agurturismo is. It is a bed&breakfast-type hotel, located in the country, mostly in huge, ancient farmhouses. Sounds quaint and romantic right? I thought so. My traveling companion had flown in from Paris for the weekend and I thought it would be a lovely idea to take him to this Agurturismo. After trying to fit in all the sightseeing and food-indulging of Florence in one day, we hopped on a train to the Siena train station, where I had understood that we could walk to our hotel. Determined to figure it out ourselves and not ask for directions or a cab, we wandered the streets of Siena utterly lost. Finally, we threw in the towel, sucked up our pride, and trekked back to the train station to ask a cab driver to speak to the concierge at the Agurturismo in Italian to figure out where we were going and take us there. After a long, confused but amused conversation, our cab driver handed me back my phone, took his price book out from his car and pointed to a listing that said "30 km - 55€". Shoot.

 to put the distance between Siena and Rapolono in perspective...

Well we certainly weren't walking. We piled dejectedly into the cab and headed off to Rapolono, where the Agurturismo actually was which is a province of Siena. Key word, Province. I guess there are a lot of those in Siena and other Tuscan towns, so watch out enthused travelers, you may not be headed where you think you are. 55 euros later we reached the other Augurtismo owned by the same people and followed the owner in her tiny seafoam blue car through winding dirt roads to our final destination. 

Finally. The hotel was nice and the two women who worked there were darlings. Thank god I was traveling with someone who stepped in after watching the owner and myself converse practically in sign language and asked if anyone spoke French. The rest of the weekend's events were communicated between him and one of the owners in fluent French which he later would ask me if he had understood correctly, kindly allowing me to feel like I was any sort of helpful. Of course I was useless. Though the hotel was nice and welcoming and the restaurants we went to were tasty, the surrounding area was anything but quaint. If I had been alone there I actually would have felt unsafe. It was the first time in my entire stay in Italy that I felt completely out of my element and really uncomfortable in my surroundings. I definitely would rather have stayed in a crappy, falling apart hotel in the most beautiful area. But regardless, any adventure had is a learning experience. I learned that I better start learning Italian more quickly and also learned the importance of a map. 

After being back in Florence for a week and fully recovered from the slight culture shock, I felt it was time to try my hand at a Tuscan adventure again. Yesterday, in the rain, a friend and I took the train...which was an adventure all in itself... to Lucca. A story to be continued at a later time...

Fresh Mozzarella Balls are like Fish

Fresh Buffalo Mozzarella is a staple food here in Italy much as string cheese is in the United States. Okay, maybe that was a bad example…but for us cheese lovers, it may make sense. Thanks to our over processed, over packaged food economy at home, everything is stocked with preservatives, wrapped in plastic, and sold in bulk… like string cheese. However, in Italy you can go into a market and hand pick out just one fresh buffalo mozzarella ball that could range in size from that of a softball to that of a marble. The array of fresh mozzarella is displayed in colorful ceramic bowls that are filled with water to preserve and keep mozzarella moist.

Which brings me to my point. In the last two days our tiny fridge has begun to get a little stinky and today I found the culprit: Fresh Mozzarella. The anonymous roommate’s mozzarella’s expiration date is not for another two weeks but the problem was that you could barley find the mozzarella in the cloudy water. I have been keeping my mozzarella in tupperware and change the water in every time I use the mozz. Don’t worry anonymous roommate, I changed the water in yours for you. So the moral of the story is, if you want to keep your fresh mozzarella fresh, treat it like a fish and change its water every day every few days.

Carnevale

As I mentioned in my previous post, Carnevale takes place annually in Venice beginning forty days before Easter and ending the day before Easter which is called Shrove Tuesday or  Mardi Gras. Carnival originally began as a celebration and means of expression throughout the social classes,  as wearing masks and the traditional elaborate costumes hid any form of identity.  Though the celebration was forgotten for a period in history, during the 1970s the Italian government decided to bring back the history and culture of Venice and used the traditional Carnival as the centerpiece of their efforts. Today, about 30,000 visitors come to Venice each day for the festivities that go on for weeks in February and March making the city a chaotic splendor of elaborate costumes and tourists from all over the world.

As I learned from the Carnevale-themed chocolate festival in Piazza Santa Croce, festivities are not limited to the watery canals of Venice. Carnevale celebrations spread throughout Italy and to other European countries. In Florence, the city gives out bags of confetti to all the children and it's the children's job to go about the city throwing tiny handfuls of confetti wherever they see fit, so essentially everywhere.

 

Walking down the street on the way to class, the sidewalk is randomly littered with firework-like splashes of colorful confetti . One can picture a child trouncing down the street, hand in hand with a parent, and stopping every whenever they feel the urge to toss a handful into the air and spin around laughing as it drifts to the ground. Street cleaners sweep most of it away in the early hours of the morning but evidence of the children's Carnevale celebrations tuck themselves away into crevices and gutters, reminding passersby of the Carnevale celebration weeks after Easter has passed.

Chocolate Festival

Need I say more? This is the 6th year that Florence has held its annual Chocolate Festival in Piazza Santa Croce in the weeks leading up to Carnevale which is held in Venice beginning the two weeks before Ash Wednesday and goes until Shrove Tuesday (better known as Mardi Gras). The chocolate festival began on February 4th and although the website says it ends on the 7th, I took this chocolate fountain picture today, the 9th. Maybe it will go on forever…wishful thinking.

At the Festival, dozens of chocolateers are gathered under the circus-like white tents in the Piazza selling their sweets. You can ask for an “assagio”, or a taste of a chocolate before you buy it…or just continue asking for assagios at every station. My favorite were these chocolate fountains where you could pick a type of skewer (banana, strawberry, grape, or a marshmellowy-looking Italian candy) to be drowned in white, milk, or dark chocolate. I picked a dark chocolate drenched strawberry skewer and munched away in bliss as I wandered the Piazza.

A pleasant surprise appeared to my over-sweetened taste buds when I came across a focaccia station serving up freshly baked rosemary and olive oil, mozzarella and tomato, and pesto and pecorino focaccias. What a great idea! After all the chocolate assagios a savory, warm, cheesy, pesto focaccia was exactly what I needed. Needless to say, it was phenomenal.

The memory of this focaccia melting in my mouth reminds me of a discovery I have made about what most people consider pizza crust in the United States. All the best pizza and foccacia I have had here is soft and doughy, never crisp or thin like they serve in the states. But although I’ve always been a supporter of crispy, bubbly crust, the soft doughy Italian way may change my perspective forever.