Today was even more eventful than yesterday, for two reasons: I learned certain invaluable information about the legendary bistecca al fiorentino, and I discovered a rare Florentine peasant food that I may have read about once and forgotten, and stumbled upon by sheer fortune!
Lorna and Melissa went to the Galleria dell'Accademia to see Michelangelo's famous David, and then they shopped for hours and hours in that true shoppers paradise. That gave me the freedom to pursue my own long-awaited foodie adventures.
But before that, we have to get out of Venice, sample more train travel, and arrive in a strange space in Florence (where, honestly, all spaces are strange), and finally deal with a European car rental.
We took a water taxi from the Hotel Colombina to the train station. I've never arrived at a train station by boat before!
We took the water taxi because we had to; the nearest Vaporetto stop was far enough away and so slow that we would have had to get up intolerably early after such an exhilarating and exhausting day of exploring Venice. Of course it was worth it for all the reasons recounted in
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, although instead of racing across the lagoon we had a limousine service up the Grand Canal. So we reserved a water taxi and the porter staged our luggage by the back door on the canal, we had a wonderful breakfast, and the fine fellows of the hotel and the boat made us feel like royalty from end to end (honestly I feel like I should be in a Merchant-Ivory movie!)
The train trip was what I expected; fast, efficient, pleasant, but not what you'd call a sight-seeing can't-miss. For sightseeing, nothing yet beats Amrak, but... The entire trip was maybe two hours in a sleek Frecciarossa train, and it took most of that to get to the industrial city of Bologna. From Bologna to Florence you go through some pretty fierce mountain. After strolling through the Po Valley farmland, there's no way to get from Bologna to Florence in 30 minutes. Except we're in the home of Ferrari and Lamborghini, the great-grandsons of those who built the Appian Way and the other masterworks of Roman engineering. We made it to Florence on time by traveling at incredible speed through a series of tunnels through the mountains - it was like Space Mountain in Disneyworld when I was 17!
Anyway, finally we're in Florence, and there's a long way to go yet. We will split up and rejoin.
- Melissa must see the David at the Galleria dell'Accademia, and Lorna wants to see it with her. They also want to see the Duomo (cathedral) and the Ponte Vecchio (old bridge of jewelers).
- Of course Lorna and I saw those things in 2015. I want to find offal peasant food and she's more interested in the finest artworks ever created. I don't get it. So I go to the Mercato Centrale and find an amazing hole-in-the-wall along the way, with lampredotto!
I have no doubt that the Accademmia and the Ponte Vecchio and the Duomo and all the shopping were just as fabulous as they'd been three years earlier. I'm not much of a shopper, unless there's a chance of finding awesome local foodie goodness, so I let them do their thing while I went foraging. My first target was the Mercato Centrale.
It took some hunting to find the Mercato Centrale. It's surrounded (on summer Sundays anyway) by a tent city of sellers of leather goods, textiles, and other fine Italian wares. Of course not a one of them wants to tell you how to go to a rival, and there's no bigger rival in the neighborhood than the Mercato Centrale.
It's amazing! It's like Eataly in Boston, but much bigger (in fact one booth is a local Eataly). There's also fish, pastry, salumi, produce, wine, spices, prepared foods, and in the middle of it all a huge and crowded food court.
I was kind of starry-eyed at all the foodie goodness there, but I was also on a mission to learn about the Bistecca alla Fiorentina, and that's where I found this adventure:
There's a lot of lore around the authentic Bistecca alla Fiorentina, so I encourage you to read my report at that link. The punchline at this fabulous market was that the beef all looked lovely, and too well-marbled to match what I had read. I asked the meatseller about the Bistecca and about his beef. He proudly proclaimed it was the finest Irish beef, and in his opinion better than the French beef that some restaurants use. I asked if I could get the local Chianina beef and he said he can't sell it because it's expensive and too hard to cook, so people get mad and don't buy it. Well, that's the point of the Bistecca alla Fiorentina so if you're a carnivore I do encourage you to read that article.
I had learned something useful about the need for alertness and skepticism when seeking the elusive Bistecca. I still had an unexpected foodie discovery coming.
As I walked down the street toward Dante's house, I saw a little hole-in-the-wall stall advertising porchetta and lampredotto. Porchetta has long been at the top of my list of favorite foods, and I had tragically struck out trying to find it on our 2015 trip. Here it was in front of me, obviously made with skill and love by someone who took it seriously.
And right beside it was a steaming pot of offal! Imagine my joy to stumble upon the Lampredotto, about which I had read, but never hoped to actually find in the wild. Lampredotto is a Florentine dish (not Tuscan, local to this city), and it's a tripe dish so it's not on every menu, especially in the tourist-crowded old city.
Lampredotto is made from the large fourth stomach of the cow, and cooked low and slow in a vegetable broth with tomato and herbs. There are two textures, and a proper lampredotto sandwich includes some of each, dressed with a piquant red sauce and/or a mild salsa verde. Christina explained all this to me while she selected the tripe and cut it up for me.
The place is called SimBIOsi Organic Street Food and it's the invisible sister to the two more touristy SimBIOsi restaurants. I say invisible because it's not even mentioned on the SimBIOsi website, so the link above goes to TripAdvisor.
We got back together at the Piazza Della Signoria, in front of the Palazzo Vecchio (that's the building in the top photo on this page). From there we walked together to the Ponte Vecchio.
The Ponte Vecchio is a big medieval bridge with jewelry shops along both sides for its entire length. When we were there, there were 29 jewelry boutiques on the bridge!
I waited in a gelateria at the far end while Lorna and Melissa shopped on the bridge. I refreshed myself with a Martini China. A Martini China is not a Martini Cocktail and it has nothing to do with the large Asian nation. Martini & Rossi makes vermouth, and Italians take vermouth far more seriously than we do. There are more varieties, of which China (pronounced KEE-na) is one that is on the bitter side, flavored with quinine; quinine used in aperitivos is called china in Italy and kina in France.
Across the Arno River is the Pitti Palace and its Boboli Gardens, but it was getting late. There are also pottery shops that Lorna wanted to see, so we raced through those before exploring the neighborhood along the western side of the river, then crossing at another bridge.
We had not eaten properly since breakfast, and it was about 7pm. We'd grazed on street food. I'd had my lampredotto, but they were subsisting on gelato and pastry, so it was time for something more substantial. We stopped at Bistrot 34r, and that was a good choice. We ordered more and more, because we were hungrier than we knew, and because everything was so good. We ended up having truffle-sauce mushroom ravioli, a pizza, grilled red shrimp and veggies, and a bottle of local Banfi Chianti Classico Riserva. That hit the spot!
We were re-energized, and there was still more exploring to do. We walked along big roads and narrow alleys as dusk arrived then we stopped a Gilli for a drink and dessert. Gilli is known for sweets and they get creative with their drinks. The prices are high - it was something like 6 euro for a Coke!
I had an "Improved Aviation", their take on the classic Aviation Cocktail. It was interesting, but I didn't think it much of an improvement, really just a different vision that deserves a different name.
We finally returned to our room at the Affittacamere Casa Corsi just as it got dark. What a surprise when we heard fireworks all around us! What a welcome to Florence! Then we discovered that that very day was the Feast of St John the Baptist, patron saint of Florence!