Abe's Adventures in Florence: Day Three in Florence

An interesting thing happened to me after I finished all my posts last night. While I was sending messages to let people know about this blog, Facebook kept prompting me for confirmation that I was really here. All the suspicious international activity made Facebook think that perhaps I was an impostor. It requested a cell phone to text a confirmation code to, but I have no cell phone here yet, so no luck. Eventually, it logged me out and changed my password. My solution, thanks to reader Gabriel Slamovits, was to insert his phone number and have him e-mail me the confirmation code. I just found it odd that Facebook of all things reacts quicker to identity theft that perhaps a credit card company might. Unfortunately, it appears that Facebook is still prompting me with captchas every time I send a message or post on my wall from my laptop, so the best way to reach me is most definitely not Facebook, since I may well get locked out again. Contact me via Skype at any point; my username is movieswithabe.

The third day of the trip began rather unexcitingly, with a walk to the campus which resulted in many a poorly thought-out crosswalk decision and extensive presentations on personal safety and NYU abroad policies. The afternoon's highly buzzed-about passport-required event was hardly a thrill, and was over in about ten seconds. A large group of us walked back to the campus and made a trip to a nearby supermarket and the 99 cent store. We do have a lot of cool things located right near our apartment. After both our visits, we were quite hungry after a long day of walking and ready to go out.

We received several recommendations from people for dinner and decided to head off walking to find a restaurant. We arrived at a place that looked nice, Il Capriccio. Sadly for our stomachs, we arrived a little after 6:30pm, only to find that all the restaurants were closed between 6pm and 7pm. We opted to walk for a bit, dropping off several among our crew at a cafe. Sadly we got quite lost trying to find our way back after peeking at a few other menus, but after a while, we located our missing people in a different cafe and finally made our way back to the restaurant.

We walked in to find that the restaurant has a ton of orange components (check out the picture below). All eight of us sat for a long time with tiny Italian dictionaries trying to decipher the menu. When the waitress came and we asked her a question, she deferred to the bartender, who said in a perfect American accent, "You guys need any help?" It turned out he was Greek and had lived in the United States for a portion of his life. Our translating fury had been in vain, and he quickly translated everything for us. I asked about penne alla vodka and he told me it was an invented American dish. Several of our group ordered the pizza margherita, some with funghi (mushrooms), another without cheese. Other dishes ordered included a pasta with vegetables, a pasta with mushrooms, and a gnocchi dish. After I had ordered, the bartender returned and told me that the chef would in fact be able to make penne alla vodka, and both not wanting to be rude and excited to try such a delicacy in Italy, I agreed to the special request. We ordered a bottle of white wine (I'm not a big fan) which we split between all of us, but before we knew it, the food came out really quickly. That seems to happen a lot here. I'm proud to report that all the food was uniformly delicious, though I nearly burnt my mouth when I consumed some of the penne alla vodka from the center of my plate. We all passed plates around to try everything, and I must admit that Serena's pasta with mushrooms was my favorite out of everything. We sat for a nice long meal, and then several members of our group split off to head home, while five of us (me, Laura, Mara, David, and Nirali) decided to go looking for gelato to finish off our meal.

The recommendation given to us was Grom, but we didn't have directions and decided to our best to locate it ourselves. We headed down the street we were on for a long time, before turning left when it seemed we had gone far enough. As it turned out, we were headed straight for the Duomo, which was cool. Laura in particular was delighted by the sight of it, and we circled the massive structure for a good long time. My pictures unfortunately didn't come out, but I'll go back during the day a number of times and share some shots here. We located an exciting gelato place, Black Bar Tavola Calda, where I got some delicious banana gelato and the others in our group got tiramisu and vanilla chocolate chip. It was all very good. We headed back a slightly different way, straight up the road we had come down to get there, making only one turn to get to the road that intersects with Borgo Pinti. Very convenient to know for future return to the area.

I'm sure my experiences over the next few days will be lots of fun, but I may not be able to blog for a day or two, so keep checking back and eventually there will be new posts! For the moment, here are some pictures from today: