It's All Good Before the Sugar High Sets In...

Yesterday, Christine and I were having caffe and chatting in the kitchen of Casa San Marcos when a friend of the owner dropped by.  As she left, she mentioned that it was the Festival of Santa Margherita, which happens every Feb. 22 in Cortona. "Go up to the church," she said.  So we did.  

There were lots of vendors, mostly selling candies and balloons (which isn't exactly what I had pictured to honor a saint, but hey, we all have our own process, don't we??).  After Christine and I went into the church and paid our respects to the remains of St. Margaret (her 800-year-old corpse is viewable behind a glass case - no really, it is), we toured the candy vendors until we settled on one.  

Now, you must know that in the US, I would never even consider nougat as a candy option.  I am a die-hard dark chocolate lover and have always shied away from the sickeningly sweet, hard-as-a-brick nougat candies, no matter how adorable the packaging is.  But here, where nougat is known as torrone, they were presented as huge mountains of nougat enveloped in thick slabs of chocolate.  There were different enticing flavors, too, like nutella, straciatella, noci (walnut)... And they were presented alongside similarly large mounds of fudge (in flavors like tiramisu and limoncello... really!).  


I think it was about 10:30 am.  I think we'd had yogurt or eggs for breakfast and likely a lot of espresso.  I think we probably could have waited another hour or two and eaten a nice, light lunch. But you know what happened next.


We bought two huge chunks of candy - for about 15 euros (just over $20).  Now, if you know me well, you know that I tend to avoid large quantities of refined sugar.  I'd like to report that I had a small sample of the straciatella nougat and spat it out on the parking lot of Chiesa di Santa Margherita.  But I didn't.  It was light, airy, sticky-chewy like a just-made marshmallow, and encrusted in a dark chocolate shell.  The fudge (we bought a walnut version) was equally stellar - melt-in-your-bocca delicious.


I'm not proud of this, but we proceeded to gorge until... well, until my blood sugar was at a rollercoaster high.  I was nearly hallucinating that the lichen-covered stone wall on the path around Cortona was just a large, delectable hunk of nougat.  I laughed and ate nougat and laughed and ate fudge and laughed... 


We hiked down around the hill, back up through Cortona proper and up a steep cobblestone hill to Casa San Marcos, where I spent the rest of the day rehydrating myself and waiting to sleep.  I finally passed out on the couch during "Napoleon Dynamite" and woke up to the bells of San Francesco and the glittering lights of Camucia below us.  With the promise of a new day, I vowed to ignore the remaining chunks of nougat and fudge.  


Until I reached the kitchen.  


Ah, to hell with it.  When in Italy...

Piazza Della Signoria

Piazza della Signoria from Erin Shachory on Vimeo.

Moonstruck

Dead center, right above the glowing ring of street lamps is the moon.
Here, it looks like a tiny speck, but in real life, it was so huge, it stopped me in my tracks.

My mom and I had huge crushes on Nicolas Cage in the late 80s, spurred by his turn as a hang-dog sexy Italian baker in Moonstruck.  I've thought of that movie several times since I've been in Italy because the moonglow has been so bright and intoxicating that it consistently rouses me at 3 am, when the moon hits my eye like a big pizza pie of astral formaggio.


The first night we were in Florence, I begged Christine to go to my favorite trattoria.  The thing is, I never remember the name correctly and I never remember the exact location.  It's more like threading my way through the streets and busy pedestrians, licking my finger and holding it up, seeing which way the wind blows me.  The odd thing is that I've found this particular place in the same fashion every single time I've been in Florence.  So, in that way, I felt fairly confident that eventually we'd find it.


Armed with a map and a vague idea of the location of the Duomo, Christine and I set out.  "It's called the Wolf and the Cat, I think," I said.  "I think it's this way."  At each corner, I scratched my head and pointed.  "Or that way."


"Well, we can see if we find it and if not, I'm sure there are other places," Christine said patiently.  And there are other places, but I was determined to find this one.


"I think it's near the Bargello?" I said, without much conviction.


Somewhere along the Proconsolo, I stopped and shrugged.  "Maybe we'll just go one more block," I said, "and then I'm cool with just stopping anywhere."


"You sure?" Christine asked.  I nodded.  "Okay then," she said, "wanna turn down that next block?"


I looked left down the small alley next to us and said, "Hey, look at the moon!"  It was like a giant orange harvest moon, and it beckoned me toward it.  "Let's just go this way 'coz the moon is so pretty," I said, "then we'll turn at the next corner."


And wouldn't you know Il Gatto & La Volpe was right there, waiting for us. 


Thank you, Cosmo's moon.  La bella luna...

Icche c’è c’è

Icche c’è c’è means "whatever there is, there is."  I love it because it implies the changeable nature of life and how we just sort of need to go with it, no matter what happens.

Icche c’è c’è took Christine and I to Florence a day earlier than we'd planned.  When we hiked down to the bus stop at Piazza Garibaldi on Saturday around lunchtime, on our way to buy a few veggies before pranza, we'd planned to simply check the bus schedule and pick out the time we needed to meet the bus on Sunday morning to get to the train station in Camucia, then we'd buy our tickets at the local tabaccheria for the train to Florence the next day (Sunday, for the flea market). But Sunday in a Catholic country means family, prayer, resting... and no buses to and from Cortona.    

"Wanna go today?" I asked.  She shrugged.

Perchè no?

And so, a few hours later, we raced toward my favorite city as the sun set over the Tuscan countryside, no idea if we could get a room at the hotel we'd booked for Sunday night and really no plan other than to trawl the flea market at Fortezza the next day.  Freedom.  Liberty.  Whatever would be, would be.

I'll post a quick video about our first night's accommodations - that seemed to be the only hiccup in an otherwise flawless weekend that wouldn't have gone off in quite the same way if we'd planned it. And isn't that what travel is all about?

Isn't that what life is all about?  Whatever there is, there is...

Talkin' 'Bout Albergo d'Inferno

Our 1st Hotel in Florence - Low-down & Dirty from Erin Shachory on Vimeo.

Why I'll Never Hook Up With An Italian Guy, Part 2

At the San Lorenzo street market, adjacent to the Medici Chapel, I was admiring the stalls of scarves and leather goods, Italian tchotchkes and hats as we took a shortcut to the Duomo.  I had just put my camera back in my coat pocket and as I passed one young, scruffy ragazzo, he smiled sheepishly and uttered, "Ciao, bella."  


I remember when I was a kid living in Naples that many southern Italians would forego the "buon" part of buongiorno (which means "good morning" or "good day"; on a side note, after lunch or pranza, you switch to buona sera, or "good evening," even though it's only about 2 pm...).  Another thing I like to do is stretch out any "r" sound I have, rolling the "r"s and then just sort of hanging out on that syllable like I own it. And because Naples has such a mafioso rep, this sort of utterance is like the equivalent of wearing a full-on gold grill over my front teeth.  Aw yeah. So I got all street on this dude and showed off my street cred, Napolitan style. 


" 'giorrrrrrrno," I said, not pausing as we passed his stall.


"You dropped something!" he called.


Whiplash-like, I turned to look on the ground, which was clear.  The guy smiled back.  "My heart," he said in English, nodding.


"Oldest trick in the book," Christine said, shaking her head at me.


Well-played, signore.

You Can Take the Girl Out of Adolescence...