Italian leather bag?... $$$...Tuscan olive oil?...priceless!

Monday we headed up to the center of Florence to buy gifts.  The markets are fun if you're savvy so we're bringing home goodies to share with some of you (you know who you are).   We got the idea to try making pumpkin risotto, a Florentine specialty and bought all the fixings at the open air market.  We can't yet speak Italian but we can cook it!  It was a great dinner at home with a nice Chianti.  Yumm.

Tuesday we broke down and went to Mama's bakery, a place down the street that caters to American clients.  They sell bagels and muffins and large cups of American style coffee.  We've been avoiding it like the plague.  Turns out we should have gone there weeks ago.  It was filled with ladies who've lived here for years and speak Italian at a speed we can understand.  They had suggestions for everything, including the best way to mail packages back to the states.  That one was key...we've bought a lot of olive oil.   We went to the post office to check prices.  That's an interesting system.  You use a machine to select a specific activity and it gives you a number and letter combination.  It's like Bingo because you wait for that combination to come up on a board and you go to the designated window to transact that specific activity.   I wonder what happens if you want to do TWO things?   Anyway, we understood enough Italian to realize shipping all that oil home meant we couldn't eat for two days, which might not have been a bad thing given the calories we're consuming.  The average cost of each bottle is now about $100 but we had to buy it.  You just can't get the same stuff at home.  That's our story and we're sticking to it.  

Tuesday night was our much anticipated pizza making lesson.  Miguel prefaced it by stressing how hard it is to make good pizza, takes years of practice, it must be in the blood, etc.  Seriousamente, how hard could it be?  After watching him deftly hand shape, dress and bake a pizza in the wood oven in under three minutes we gave it a whirl.  Twenty minutes later Miguel dramatically threw our efforts in the trash, handed us a rolling pin and said try again.    He was right.  Good pizza is hard to make but it was really fun to try.  We finally turned out a couple good enough that Tammi ate an entire pizza by herself.  Needless to say she walked halfway to Rome the next morning.  

Wednesday was Bronzino day.  Bronzino was a Renaissance painter and there was a showing of his work at the Palazzo Strozzi we wanted to see.  It was awesome because the collection included works from here in Florence and others flown in from private collections and galleries around the world.  What a great opportunity to see his paintings all in one place.  Beautiful!  After Bronzino we met Adri and Stefania for dinner at the Borgo, where we had another fabulous meal and practically closed the place down.  Emily, our favorite waitress (and Andrea's girlfriend) is from Sweden.  When Adri learned that, she started chatting with her in Swedish.  Swedish?  Are you kidding?  We hate her.   

Thursday we bought beautiful purses designed by Alessandra.  At dinner the night before Stefania and Adri told Tammi her Ameri-bag travel purse, which she shamelessly carries at home,  had to go and I should get my haircut here in Florence.  They're determined to make Italian women out of us yet.  A haircut was going to cost more than the olive oil but Alessandra gave us such a good deal on the purses we had to buy one.   Tam's walking pretty proud now.

Friday we visited Palazzo Davanzanti and then stopped by a profumeria to see if they might have anything strong enough to tackle our apartment smell.  Why didn't anybody tell us about THAT weeks ago?  It smelled so good in there we could have moved in.  We found sheets of paper you burn in a bowl.  Good thing these old apartments don't have smoke detectors.  You can't see across the room after you burn one but the smell is gone.  Later we picked up the cute little Smart Car and headed to Orvieto.  More on that later!