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Europe, March-April 1998 Florence, Italy So after being at Big G's for a couple of days, we arrived a short while later in Florence. The first order of business was to find a hotel and that was done without much fanfare. Our room was quite big by European standards and even featured our own shower... in the corner of the room. The we promptly went to the leather market and bought a jacket for Casey from a friend of a friend.... You get the picture. Then it was onto sight seeing. We hit all of the hot spots, starting with the Duomo. Climbing up was really fun and fantastic, but at the top, Casey said to me, "Now wait here and when I call you, take my picture." So I waited, and after about five minutes, I hear, "Psst! Hey, Em, take the picture!" I look down from the top and see Casey standing on a little concrete lip that comes out of the dome. After my heart attack, I take the picture. And then a few years later, I marry him. You can't say that I didn't have any warning... So we run around some more, going to the DeMedici Tombs and Santa Croce home church of Michelangelo and where Enrico Fermi is buried. That night, we decide to take a chance and have dinner at a little restaurant across the street from our hotel. We each get the menu and start with a little salad and for my main course, I chose some pasta dish. Pretty good. Casey, who decides to be adventurous, goes for the Fontina, thinking that they wouldn't just serve him a wedge of cheese for dinner. WRONG!!!! So having finished dinner, we're sitting and laughing at his predicament, when the couple at the table beside us are served dishes of something white and quivering, covered in chocolate sauce. We quickly tell our waiter that whatever that is, we want it, and thus we discover the joys of panna cotta. Because I had never seen this dessert before, I ask the waiter if he knows how it is made and he in turn, tells the chef. The chef comes out and chats with us for a while, and I, being the charming and sly girl that I am, wheedles the recipe out of him. "It is very simple," he said, "Just one litro de panna, two sheets of fish glue, four large spoons of zucchero (they are a bit bigger than our tablespoons) and a small cup of amaretto." Hmm... I'm not sure that I remember that right, but I'm going to try it out soon... The next day we visit stood in line for the DAVID and the Uffizi. Now most pictures of DAVID never do him enough justice. That's because there's no perspective and no way of knowing that he's around 20 feet tall! When we walked into the hall with him at the end, Casey's jaw dropped. The closer we got, the more he said "WOW!" When we got up close, we had to sit down like a couple of art students and just look and contemplate. Pretty awesome. As for the Uffizi, Casey didn't really care for the Fra Angelicos, barely any of the religious art or for the most part any of the paintings. He did stop for a while in front of Donatello's Printemps and Birth of Venus, and also Michelangelo's Sagrada Familia, but that's pretty much it. And then there was the sculpture of a guy lashed to a tree... but for the most part, I think that he was unappreciative. We went on a hunt for riso gelato at a place recommended by Rick Steves and found it. To this day, it's Casey's favorite flavor of gelato, but rarely found in the U.S. That night we went to a small, self-serve, but decent place recommended by our landlord. I can't remember much about it, and then the next day we were off to Pisa and then ROME!
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