Episode 7 – my town Firenze Florence
While Rome is famous for its quantity of tourist places, Florence makes up for it with the quality of its art and sculpture. In my humble opinion, Florence housed a better selection of architecture, buildings, monuments, bridges, museums, and they are all finely decorated with exquisite sculptures.
The Sistine chapel is grand and overpowering but it lacks the artistic charisma of Duomo (the house of God). The different natural color marbles and the exterior detailing on the walls gives you the far sense of superiority.
You should not miss the statue of David by Michelangelo. That might be a duplicate and yet it is stunning enough to demand your admiration. The fine muscle lines, the lovely flow of the body, the details all pointed out to some life like spirit captured within this figure. The statue might one day come alive. The stare of the statue was just amazing. It brought a strong, determined sense of vision. It can certainly look into the future with its positive influence.
David is not the only sculpture there, Dante, Bellini, Da Vinci, they are all equally impressive. You should spend a whole week or two to explore Florence. Bring some culture into your soul and nourish your mind. Of course you could take on the alternate route and that was shopping.
Our tour guide was a young man in his late twenty. He had charisma and he was well liked. He was also a complete rounder. A rounder is a person who has such street smart that he/she would have access to every single desire. His network was many and he has cousins everywhere, in every trade. We were offered to test the lasagne.
Lasagne North American style is made of layers of noodles and infused with ricotta cheese and tomato sauce between the layers. But the lasagne in Florence uses fresh pasta and lace the whole content with Béchamel sauce. Béchamel sauce is a basic white sauce of cream, butter and flour but it has the smooth texture of cream.
We went into this little restaurant. The servers came out and greeted us though no one could speak English. Lasagne was ordered. We bite into this velvety creation and it was instant heaven. Homemade pasta is made with flour and eggs only. As a result, it has a lot of give and it can be pressed down to really thin layer without breaking. This with the béchamel sauce combined into a rewarding concoction of smooth, fragrant food that creeps down your throat without your notice. You need bread to soak up every drop of sauce on your plate before you quit. We have a gold rule. The simplest food is the most difficult food to make it outstanding. The Lasagne is made of the very basic ingredients and in order to make it shine, you have to do your trick to make every ingredient noticeable.
The little restaurant has 2 family crests, one on each wall. On the crest are 2 eagles. Eagles are only allowed with nobility in olden days. May be we stumbled onto a place run by some chef who worked for some nobility. I was too tired and too full to explore. It was time to go back to the ship and slept, dreaming of other Italian goodies.