When I last spoke of Panzano, I said we'd gone back Sunday evening to buy a cheesecake from the Conca d'Oro pizzeria, which turned out to be a terrible mistake.Several of you were aghast - how could anything involving cheesecake be a mistake???
Well - when we ordered it, we didn't ask how much it would cost. That's how. And the restaurant charged us by the slice for it, which wound up being something like 35+ euros. A the time we were there currency was being converted at 1.6 dollars to the euro. Go ahead and do the math, I'll wait.
Yeah. Yeah it was damned expensive. But what were we to do? We sucked it up, brought it home, and then we ate it. The world's most expensive cheesecake. But before we did, Aunt Maureen drew a little dollar sign in the powdered sugar.
Buying the Cheesecake of Serious Cost
Bringing the Cheesecake of Unusual Cost home...
Diana Cuts the CakeOf course we ate it for breakfast the next morning, also. Mmmmm. (It was really delicious though...)
The next day the rest of our party was set to arrive from Rome. We thought it would be best to only do a half day's exploration of someplace local, so we could be back to greet them when they arrived. We drove up to Greve in Chianti.
Greve's a lovely little place to visit and have lunch - their village square humorously holds a statue of Verrazano - yes the very same for whom the bridge is named. Evidently he was a local.
Jesse next to the statue:
The black rooster is a symbol of the Chianti region of Tuscany -
According to legend, Florence and Siena decided to resolve the conflict over control of the Chianti region with a contest. At dawn with the crowing of the rooster two knights would depart at a gallop from their respective cities, and the place of their meeting would mark the new boundary. But the wily Florentines fed their black rooster very sparingly; with his belly empty he woke up early and crowed - giving the Florentine champion a head start. The rooster from Siena was well fed and overslept - so the Florentine champion covered much more ground and from that point on the Chianti region belonged to Florence. They say this is why the best Chianti wines are marked with a black rooster - and in the above photo you can see him again, crowing.
I'll bet hindus hate to visit Italy - everywhere you look there's dead cow. Leather goods and butcher's shops are all over the place.
I took pictures of this particular butcher's shop because it was where I purchased some vacuum packed prosciutto to bring home to Sandy.
We had lunch at this place one afternoon.
A note on European coffee and hot chocolate. They take these beverages very, very seriously in Europe. They are not messing around. That is why if you order a hot cocoa what you will get is a cup of boiling bittersweet hot pudding that you have to add sugar to just so you can get it down.
Served to you by a guy that looks like he could ONLY be named Fabio. You think idly to yourself that he probably poses for the covers of romance novels in his spare time. And then you listen to him and the other barrista chatting and suddenly you realize, he really IS named Fabio.
And then you ask if you can take his picture. Or at least, I did.
The next day the rest of our party was set to arrive from Rome. We thought it would be best to only do a half day's exploration of someplace local, so we could be back to greet them when they arrived. We drove up to Greve in Chianti.
Greve's a lovely little place to visit and have lunch - their village square humorously holds a statue of Verrazano - yes the very same for whom the bridge is named. Evidently he was a local.
Jesse next to the statue:
The black rooster is a symbol of the Chianti region of Tuscany -
According to legend, Florence and Siena decided to resolve the conflict over control of the Chianti region with a contest. At dawn with the crowing of the rooster two knights would depart at a gallop from their respective cities, and the place of their meeting would mark the new boundary. But the wily Florentines fed their black rooster very sparingly; with his belly empty he woke up early and crowed - giving the Florentine champion a head start. The rooster from Siena was well fed and overslept - so the Florentine champion covered much more ground and from that point on the Chianti region belonged to Florence. They say this is why the best Chianti wines are marked with a black rooster - and in the above photo you can see him again, crowing.
I'll bet hindus hate to visit Italy - everywhere you look there's dead cow. Leather goods and butcher's shops are all over the place.
I took pictures of this particular butcher's shop because it was where I purchased some vacuum packed prosciutto to bring home to Sandy.
We had lunch at this place one afternoon.
A note on European coffee and hot chocolate. They take these beverages very, very seriously in Europe. They are not messing around. That is why if you order a hot cocoa what you will get is a cup of boiling bittersweet hot pudding that you have to add sugar to just so you can get it down.
Served to you by a guy that looks like he could ONLY be named Fabio. You think idly to yourself that he probably poses for the covers of romance novels in his spare time. And then you listen to him and the other barrista chatting and suddenly you realize, he really IS named Fabio.
And then you ask if you can take his picture. Or at least, I did.
Fabio. No, really.
Hilariously we overheard him asking the other coffeeshop guy why he thought I wanted his picture, and the other guy said, (we think), in Italian something to the effect of - "dude. Because you're freaking hot." This was amazing.
Then we returned to the villa to wait for the rest of our party to arrive, and Diana embarrassed Jesse by beating him at ping pong about 300 times.
Then we returned to the villa to wait for the rest of our party to arrive, and Diana embarrassed Jesse by beating him at ping pong about 300 times.
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2 comments:
OMG, the Fabio thing cracked me up!! I can NOT believe you guys paid that much for a cheesecake, I would have fallen over in shock. ;)
That hot chocolate looks rather, ummm, thick. Not sure I could have done it, sugar or not!
**AAARRLLLGGHHH** (sound of Homer Simpson-style drooling - apply it to whatever picture you wish)
I do think that Fabio should have had an extra button undone on his shirt, though! ;)
DoctorDude and I play the France v. Italy food competition all the time. He thinks that Italy beats France in caffeinated products and salted pork products, but France wins on cheese and also wine. We are still undecided in the ice cream/gelato category. Your pictures make me hunger for another trip to Europe but, alas, we will probably wait for a better exchange rate.
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