For your reading pleasure, or boredom (your choice) part 4: Italy (cont). I’ll wrap things up tomorrow I hope, since the wedding will make this entry long.
2003/10/24 – Friday
This was the prime shopping day. We started by walking to Grazia’s mid morning. We managed to take nearly the shortest route possible – again, without any maps. My mom found some shoes, and wanted our (mostly my brother’s) opinion on them before buying. We walked to a few shoe shops, and drove to another. By the time we did all that, it was early afternoon. We had lunch, then headed back to the center for more shopping, since my brother still hadn’t found everything he wanted. Also, I wanted to climb to the top of the Duomo, having not had the opportunity to do that on my last visit. Unfortunatly, we didn’t think about the fact that everything we bought we’d have to carry to the top, and we shopped first. Ryan found a mid length leather jacket, and a couple belts. I bought a tapestry to hang on the wall (which is now up in the living room, I’m very happy with it). After that we climbed to the top of the church, there was a 20 minute or so line to wait in first. Its pretty amazing on the inside of the dome, being so close to the painting. They definitely could use some restoration work, but even so they’re incredibly impressive. Once outside, it’s the best view of Florence you could hope for. The sun came out from behind the clouds while we were on top, so I got some good pictures. It’s neat how peaceful and quiet it is from the top. There was a camera crew on the top, but I never did figure out what they were doing. My only guess was getting some ‘stock’ footage for a movie.
That night Francesca made dinner for us, just pasta as we wanted to prepare ourselves for the wedding feast the next day. It was excellent, as all the food was. Alberto met us for dinner, and afterwards we went out with Max and a couple of his friends to an English pub on the other side of Florence. I tried a white beer, or something like that, but didn’t like it too much. The conversation (from what I could tell, and was told) revolved around motorcycles, and what Ryan & I do for work. We didn’t stay out too late, since we wanted to be well rested for the big day.
2003/10/25 – Saturday
We woke up early so that we didn’t have to rush around, and had time to get all prettied up. We started heading to the center again, drove part way and took a shuttle bus the rest of the way. After meeting up with some of the other family, and grabbing a bit to eat, we headed in to Palazzo Vecchio, which is where the wedding was taking place. Since it’s a government building, they have metal detectors. Keep in mind we’re going to a wedding, and all dressed up. Luckily my belt didn’t set off the detector, as it would have been a pain in the butt to put on, as it barely fit through the loops and took me a good couple minutes to get on.
We had a little time to socialize once inside, and of course take a few pictures. We had to wait before going into the red room as they do back to back to back weddings ceremonies. The red room, which is where the ceremony took place, was fairly nice, but had huge windows on one side (opposite where I happened to be), which made for awful picture taking. I’m hoping my mom, who was on the other side, got some better pictures. Being as it was hard to hear, and my extreme lack of comprehension of Italian, it was a little difficult to determine what was going on at times. There was the serious part at first, where the law was explained, then the “I do” part, then signing of paperwork and things. The guy who was presiding over the ceremony made several jokes, so it seemed rather informal.
We were essentially kicked out of the red room so another ceremony could take place, and hung out in the courtyard area where we waited beforehand, and took some more pictures and such. After a little bit, we went outside and took a big group picture in front of the building, where all the tourists were too. It’s interesting coming out of a wedding and having crowds of tourists. Anyway, after all that, we headed to the restaurant out in the country for dinner. Beforehand, was the official time for picture taking, where posing was involved. The bride and groom had all of the families there come stand with them so people could take pictures. It was a good idea since we had plenty of time before eating. They brought out some appetizers after the pictures were done.
Finally, the real food began. We went in and found our spots. Then started the appetizer dishes, the stuff outside was more like party snacks. These kept coming, I lost track of how many dishes were brought out, but just having a little of each was filling me up. My favorite is this cheese stuffed pasta covered in this sauce that is made by a fungus-like root. I guess it’s related to a mushroom, but it grows entirely in the ground and they use dogs to find it. Thus, it’s very expensive, and very tasty… probably the most expensive food that I really like a lot. I went for seconds on that one :). After all the appetizers came the pastas. Three of them. I had some of each, and they were all awesome, definitely right up there with the best I’ve ever had. They followed this by the meat, which consisted of things like chicken wings – again extremely tasty. I want to go back to this place soooo bad. Besides the awesome food, and plenty of wine, there were many toasts. A couple of them from the best man to ‘the Americans’ – he even managed it in English. The wedding cake, which was two heart shaped fruit-covered cakes (I’ll post picture of this), was very good, and much different from the typical American wedding cake – I liked it a lot. There wasn’t a dance, or anything like that (thankfully). The dinner took nearly 4 hours thou, which gives you an idea of how much food there was.
After the feast, we went home and slept for a while. We woke up at around 2300, as it was planned to go to a club that night with the younger crowd from the wedding. It was a member’s only type of club, but they let us in anyway. Essentially a bar area and dance floor, and they played a lot of 80s type music. Max’s best man took us to the bar, and told us we needed to try rum with pear juice (separate glasses), because it was a common drink in Italy. One thing to keep in mind, the drinks there are a lot bigger than in places in the US and Mexico I’ve been to, so there was quite a bit of straight rum there to drink – not the sort of thing to take all at once, as I was originally thinking based on the description. Shortly thereafter, my brother suggested whiskey. I wasn’t feeling too bad, and figured that given the occasion a 2nd drink wouldn’t be inappropriate (I generally only go for 1 drink a night). They played some pretty good songs, some I hadn’t heard in a long long time, and I danced some. One good thing, is Italians are generally pretty bad dancers, so my extreme lack of skills wasn’t a big deal. It was fun. After finishing that whiskey I was definitely feeling the effects. Ryan, Alberto and I stayed for a while after everyone else in our group had left. Around 0300 we decided to go, but didn’t make it too far. Outside the club was a street vendor, selling sandwiches and things. Ryan & Alberto both got some food, I had a bit of each of there’s. I downed 2 bottles of water in pretty short order. By 0330 we were on our way home. It was all in all a very fun time.