Il Duomo di Firenze

My second day in Florence started with lining up at the Duomo bright and early. The ticket office was a bit difficult to locate. I was told "number 7 on the wall". I ran around the entire vicinity before I finally found a nondescript small metal 7 beside a door opening into a courtyard. The ticket office was hidden deep inside.

I lined up for climbing the dome first, while I still had some energy. Having climbed both Notre Dame and St. Paul's Cathedral on my last trip to Europe, the Duomo seemed a much quicker climb. (I believe there are a few hundred steps less in the Duomo.) The stairs are very narrow and become quite steep towards the top.

After climbing to the top, you're rewarded with a wonderful view of the red roof tops of Florence.

The cathedral, dome and bell tower are decorated with patterned marble in green and red on the entire façade. The construction of the cathedral spanned 140 years and 9 architects.

A small snack of lampredotto, with two types of salsa from a small cart a few steps from the dome. I tend to maybe overdo it a bit when it comes to local foods when I travel. (On my first visit to London, I ate a hearty breakfast of black pudding, baked beans, tomato, fried bread, mushrooms and sausage every single day.) I think I showed some restraint by only having tripe 3 times during my 2 day stay.

The cathedral is underlain by Roman ruins and an older church. There's an exhibition of some artifacts that were found and sketches of the plan above and beyond. The exhibit let's you walk among some of the excavated ruins and on the mosaic floors from centuries ago.

The floor of the modern cathedral above and the mosaics of the ruins below.

The Baptistery was undergoing renovations so the outside was completely covered in scaffolding. The Baptistery is octagonal and built on the location of a series of older baptistery. The octagon shape is apparently often used for baptisteries as the number 8 is very important in Christian numerology, symbolizing resurrection.

The ceiling of the Baptistery is richly decorated in golden mosaics depicting Biblical scenes, angels, and the last judgement. The full gamut of angelic beings are depicted: dominions, powers,  archangels, regular angels, principalities, virtues and thrones.

The famous bronze doors by Lorenzo Ghiberti have been restored and are now preserved in the nearby Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, behind glass in a dehumidified environment. The doors on the Baptistery are a replica. 

For lunch, there are plenty of choices in the streets radiating from the Duomo.

Pappa al Pomodoro (Florentine tomato soup)

Pappardelle al Cinghiale (pasta with wild boar)

Tagliatelle ai Porcini (pasta with wild porcini mushrooms)

Sadly my time in Florence drew to a close and I boarded the train for Venice. The first thing I did in Venice was eat more food. I was especially looking forward to squid ink risotto.

Seafood spaghetti

Squid ink risotto

Grilled fish of some sort and scampi

We stayed in a lovely hotel, that I will introduce more in my next posts on Venice.

Mother's Day

Due to slightly unfortunate scheduling, I was out for most of Mother's Day participating in my company's team for CANstruction. However it did mean that I happened to be in downtown so I was able to pick up a lovely bouquet of flowers for my mom! 

For dinner I cooked what I call a  "White Bouillabaisse" (no relation to actual bouillabaisse). Seafood are sautéed and thrown into a pot of sweating onions. Fish was in butter; shrimp with butter and garlic; squid with shallots and white wine. The shellfish is added last. Dried dulse and basil is sprinkled in with some sea salt and an additional splash of white wine. Maybe 100cc of water, rest of liquid is from onion.

List of ingredients in no particular order: 

Tiger shrimp, Mussel, Savoy clam, Manila clam, Squid, Fish (white meat, forgot what kind), Sundried Dulse (from east coast), Sweet Onion, Basil, Garlic, Shallots, Sea Salt, White Wine, Allspice, white pepper. 

Firenze - Day 1

I started off the first day in Florence by lining up at the Uffizi museum bright and early. You can buy line skipping tickets for a few euros extra online which I highly recommend for the summer. But if it's not the high tourist season and you start the day early, I would suggest waiting the 30-45 min and use the money towards some delicious trippa for lunch. No pictures are allowed inside!

I suggest waking up early either way because Florence has lovely street scenes. The ruddy orange hues of the buildings are beautiful in the soft light of the early morning.

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The Uffizi houses a vase collection of works originating from the Medici family collection. They were donated by the last heiress of the family, with the explicit condition that none of the artwork was to leave Florence. Depending on how fast you view art, how much of the exhibition halls are open at a time, and whether or not you choose to rent an audio-tour, the Uffizi will likely take around two to four hours.

There’s too many famous artwork in the Uffizi to cover here. There should be a few pieces familiar to most people, including Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus” and “La Primavera”. Of course there’s the works of Leonardo da Vinci and Caravaggio, and of Michelangelo, Raphael, and other great artists of the Italian Renaissance. I was personally excited about Titian’s “Venus of Urbino” as I had written a short paper on Titian in high school. This Venus is considered to be from his “middle period” in terms of style and is striking in the bold stare of the Venus towards the viewer as she reclines in full nudity, the effect more so in person.

When I saw an artwork I had studied, I would excitedly look for the important artistic and historical details, the symbolism, the use of colours and shadows that I had learned about all those years ago. (I will admit I prattled off facts like a child returning from a particularly exciting school-lesson.) For artwork I was unfamiliar with, I simply enjoyed the beauty and tried to infer a little bit about it from the subject matter and what styles or symbolism I could recognize. One of the joys of the Uffizi, in addition to the paintings on display in the individual salons, is the hallways hung with portraits, the ceiling painted with all manner of birds and pastoral themes and statues littering along the sides.

(Now that I’ve thoroughly bored you with my words, time for some pictures.)

The bridge Ponte Vecchio is just a few steps away from the Uffizi. If you’re a photography buff, I recommend visiting in the late afternoon to early evening for the best light. I took just a few random shots since the weather wasn’t too good. I think the bridge should be also of some professional interest to any structural engineers, planners or architects.

The stores on the bridge sell mostly fine jewellery. I would say the main draw here is actually the closed stores, where you can see the traditional store front and the metal detailing.

Through the help of a poor restaurant waiter who was trying to gather business, I got directions to a food cart selling the Florentine street food trippa (tripe.) I got it in a container, as opposed to the sandwich, in the tomato broth it’s cooked in and topped with a bit of salsa verde. Trippa and lampredotto (fourth stomach) are typically around 4.5 euros for the sandwich and 7 euros for a bowl.

The food cart was near the back of the market, Mercato Nuovo, famous for the Fontana del Porcellino. Rubbing the nose of the bronze statue of a wild boar is said to bring you back to Florence in the future. The piglet has a very shiny nose indeed. (Very difficult to get a good picture due to the tourists crowded around.)

Next up was Loggia dei Lanzi and Piazza della Signoria, home to the replica of Michelangelo’s “David” and other well-known statues. It was around then that it started raining so I went for some gelato and to hide from the rain for a bit. Oh and I also passed by some churches along the way.

Not the same church. Second one pictured also had very nice stained glass windows (less common in Italy than in France I noticed) and statues around the outside walls. Unfortunately none of my pictures turned out very well.

This is one of the famous gelato stores you’ll find in guidebooks, as you can see from the crowd milling about. A bit of (industrial) engineering geekiness: they have a really efficient system where you pay for the cup size first and then go in front of the glass display to point out your flavours. They had one guy working the till and two at serving ice cream.

After some delicious gelato, the heavens cleared up and I started the climb to Piazzale Michelangelo. I encountered an amusing little statue crossing one of the many bridges spanning the river. Quite a confident gait; I wonder what the artist is suggesting…

As I was walking through the streets of Florence, I had noticed some street signs with amusing stickers placed over them. Continuing on by the river side, heading towards Piazzale Michelangelo, I started seeing more and more… until I accidently stumbled upon the artist’s shop! Unfortunately it was closed, but I did take a few sneaky pictures through the window. After that I paid extra attention in hopes of catching some more humorously defaced signs.

The artist is Clet Abraham, French but living in Florence for the better part of 20 years. You can search online for more of his works. (Facebook page: https://fr-fr.facebook.com/pages/CLET/108974755823172)

On the way up a set of shallow stone steps, a hidden garden was tucked into the wall. Run by the local Lions Club, the garden is freely open to the public year round and contains a myriad of roses, lemon trees, wisteria and other plants. It also offers a great view of the hilly outskirts of Florence and the old city walls. (It also happens to be a great place for taking pretty pictures of oneself.)

(Leave it to an engineer to purposely leave a crane in frame in a photo.)

The steps have a series of crosses on small piled up stone pyramids along the right-hand side: the fourteen Stations of the Cross. The final one is by the entrance of a church after you climb the stairs to the top.

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Piazzale Michelangelo offers some breathtaking views of Florence. The actual piazza holds some bronze replicas of Michelangelo statues. As a side note, you will find a rather clean and free public washroom just underneath the steps of the piazza, a rare treat in Italy

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I was ready for a hearty meal after all those stairs and an entire day of walking. Dinner was at the famous Il Latini. Be warned that they do require a reservation. If you’re particularly lucky, you may get a table without a reservation if you have a small party and go early enough, as in my case. The restaurant has a warm rustic feel. Wine bottles line the walls and (real!) prosciutto legs hang from the ceiling.

Florentine steaks are made with high grade beef and sold by weight. Generally half a kilogram is the least amount they will sell at a time. The friendly waiter (more like a jolly uncle) recommended about 500g per person with some appetizers and local vegetables on the side. If you have more of an appetite, get some regional pasta (pici) and some thick tomato soup (pappa al pomodoro). And don’t forget the table wine!

Steak is 50 euros per kilogram. Wine is about 12 euros a litre. You pour yourself and the waiter will estimate the price when he comes around to do the bill based on how much of the bottle you drank. Prices are around average for a nice sit down restaurant. Website here: http://www.illatini.com/?lang=en. Mark the location on your cellphone map using wifi before you leave the hotel, Italian roads can be difficult to navigate with address alone.

Dinner was finished off with some free Tuscan biscotti and a small glass of Vin Santo (sweet liquor). And off I wandered, slightly inebriated with both wine and food, into the cool night air of Firenze.

Italy Digest

I had an amazing time during my first visit to Italy. There's too many pictures and too much to tell, so I'll start off slow with some iPhone photos while I sort through the 1200 on my camera. We visited Florence, (Cinque Terre, Pisa), Venice and Rome on this trip. Rather than a true digest, this is more of an introduction.

The flight there wasn't too bad; as usual I spent the time catching up on movies. We transferred in Amsterdam, where I got to sit on some cool Danish Modern chairs. We took a taxi from the airport to our hotel once we reached Florence. Our taxi driver was an impeccably dressed elderly Italian man in a purple sweater. In Italy, the lanes are a suggestion: 4 cars, 2 scooters and a bicycle easily drive through a three lane road. It's all traffic circles in Italy, which just added to the chaos.

"lemon and wisteria"  --  one of the many leitmotifs of my trip in Italy. Flowers blanketed daily life in Italy, unlike North America where they are too often relegated to appearances on special occasions only. They overflowed on balconies and you were bound to find a flower market on weekends.

And the food! Not just pasta and pizza, although there were many, for me on this trip. I didn't imagine pasta and pizza could taste so much better as they did in Italy. There was absolutely wonderful seafood in Venice and Cinque Terre, and of course I hunted out the local specialties, like tripe (trippa and lampredotto) in Florence. I've had more gelato in two weeks than I normally eat during an entire summer.

This is just a small sample of the overwhelming spam of food pictures to come.

Italy was a wonderful mix of the modern and the old: cars and scooters racing down narrow cobblestone alleyways, wooden shutters on leaning old buildings selling cellphone sim cards, and modern concrete buildings straddling the ruins of empires gone by. Very different from the sterile newness that pervades North American cities.  

Rome in particular was an amazing millefeuille of Baroque wrapped Renaissance churches built on Roman Republic plazas built on early Roman ruins built over ancient pagan temples.

The architecture is of course undeniably magnificent. The churches are draped in decadence: mosaics, paintings, marble and sculptures cover every surface. There's a mixture of styles spanning years and countries. I did start to get a bit of church fatigue towards the end and my neck was hurting from straining to see the frescos on the ceilings. (A quote from Mr. Demwell, my half Italian high school teacher: "ABC, another bloody church".)

I was incredibly happy with all the wonderful and amazing artworks I was able to see. Similar to my trip to the Louvre, there's an incredible sense of excitement at seeing paintings and sculptures I've studied but so far only seen in pictures. By the end of our meander through the Uffizi, I had taught my mother to recognize the Annunciation and baby John the Baptist in paintings.

(Another credit here to Mr. Demwell for his explanation of the Assumption which I used: you can't have Jesus' mother dying, especially not growing old or with sickness. No claims to dogmatic or theological correctness.)

In Venice, everything was a boat, even the traffic jams. I'll probably harp on this point again later. Garbage boat, postal boat, ambulance boat, police boat, taxi boat, construction boat...

A highlight of my trip: seeing the Pope! (I think. Does it look like the pope?)  We happened to be in St. Peters while they were wrapping up a mass.

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Next up: Cinque Terre and Pisa! (A fair warning now that there will be almost no food pictures because I was too excited and ate everything before I remembered.)

Food, glorious food!

A parade of the food of March, starting off with one of my new favourite sushi restaurant. The links to the restaurant website will be at the end of the post.

Chirashi-don from Tsuki Sushi Bar

Yes, that is three type of roe and a wealth of sashimi placed at the side, including plump scallops. What really separates it from the rest are the pickles and the sprouts. Their tamagoyaki is also amazing.

Some more pictures of various sushi from the same place:

Delicious sushi (can't remember what they were called) from Tsuki Sushi Bar.

One of my stand-by favourites is Kita-no-Donburi. Judging by the name you would expect me to rave about their donburi, except they're unfortunately quite average. They are delicious, but nothing exceptional. Rather, their special sushi rolls are more of a standout. Again it's the little touches, like the sprinkled nori or those red things, that makes it a bit extra-special.

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The more typical downtown lunch fare (if there is such a thing) would be sandwiches and etc. from what I call "faux-rustic/industrial brasserie-inspired West Coast fusion hipster retro café-restaurant". Yes, that was a lot of words. No, I don't have a more compact or elegant way to describe the type of food shops common in Gastown and Downtown.

Ploughman's Plank from Chill Winston.

Above are some delicious house-made terrine and sausage with mustard, spicy pickled vegetables and lightly roasted bread. Although called a Ploughman's Plank, the portion is only suitable if you happen to be an exceedingly tiny (or lazy) ploughman. I happen to love cured meats and vegetables, so things like this are right up my alley. Chill Winston has pretty slow service at lunch though, so don't go with a large crowd. This dish required minimum preparations and the place was practically empty but it still took them a good 15 min to bring this out of the kitchen. The waitresses were also not very attentive at all. Their food is good though and I recommend coming back in the evenings for some of their cocktails.

Soup and salad lunch combo from Rainier Provisions.

The decor of this place screams retro (and hipster). They have lovely turquoise steel folding chairs and all food comes on these tin trays. This was cream of mushroom soup (rotating daily soup) and a beet and roasted fennel salad (with local goat cheese!). Rainier Provisions is also unfortunately lacking in the service department. Nothing severe but everything is just quite slow.

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On the cooking front, I haven't done much this month (that I've taken photos of). I did take a picture of my totally not authentic cabbage rolls.  I was craving them due to the cold weather (spring, where?). I think the ones I make are a little closer to the Polish variety but I honesty have no clue. I just slapped together some ingredients and wrapped them up.

The filling is half and half ground beef and pork, finely diced onions, cabbage and potatoes, some coriander and a mix of ground spices containing sea salt, peppercorn, allspice and paprika. The cabbage leaves were parboiled first to make them more malleable for wrapping. It's simmered in a mix of tomatoes and onions, seasoned with sea salt, pepper and rock sugar.

Although I did so well to not get sick while everyone around me was deathly contagious, I finally fell victim to the plague at the end of March. Strangely it made me crave South-Eastern curries, so I went out and bought some. It's all semi-instant roux because I don't usually cook with any spices, and as such don't tend to stock any. I forgot to take a picture, but the brand of the curry noodles below also makes a delicious (for instant noodles) laksa. I also bought some cream stew (クリームシチュー) roux as well because I've been wanting to try a half-curry half-cream stew concoction à la 鴛鴦炒飯.

All from T&T.

I'll be heading to Italy for just over a week in April, so stay tuned for next month's food porn. 

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Tsuki Sushi Bar | Kita no Donburi | Chill Winston | Rainier Provisions