the weekend

Apologies that these weekend update entries are happening later and later. But in my defense, this one was relatively uneventful. Friday morning, I woke up extraordinarily early to catch a train to Rome, to retrieve my passport-hopefully-with-Russian-visa-within. And it was there. It's really happening. I am going to Russia ????!!!!!?!?!??!!!!!! Utterly ridiculous, right? But anyways, that was there, that happened, you know, no biggie. I had grand plans of walking all around Rome again like I had done two weekends prior, but fatigue set in rather quickly, and after walking down via XX Settembre to the piazza Quirnale (that's the piazza from last week that I liked, but couldn't remember the name of) I simply walked down the stairs and went to this little café for an early lunch. And the café was awesome. It's called Papyrus, and if you are ever on the via Lucchesi, on the way between the Pantheon and via XX Settembre, which is a main throughway to get back to the train station, you must stop there. It's one of those little bookstore-cum-cafés like Trident on Newbury Street or R.J. Julia in Madison. All the books they sell are in Italian, but a lot of them are literature in translation, from English to Italian. There I found a publishing company called minimum fax, which publishes anthologies (along with other things, I suspect) of contemporary American and British literature and ficition. Thus I found a poetry anthology that included work by Frank Bidart, fiction anthologies with Zadie Smith and Jonathan Safran Foer, and David Foster Wallace's A Supposedly Funny Thing I'll Never Do Again. Besides the big, open atrium in the front of the store where you can stand at the counter for a cappuccino, there is also a back room, painted this really soothing shade of ochre that has bookcases all along the perimeter and tables set in a concentric circle a little bit within. That is where I sat and ate a delicious plate of gnocchi alla genovese, which is gnocchi with tomato pesto sauce instead of the usual cheese, but equally delicious. And and the waitstaff were all amazingly kind to me, and we had nearly-a-conversation in mostly-Italian, which is pretty big for me these days. After lunch, I knew that I wasn't up for much else, so I simply walked back to the train station and hopped on a slow local back to Florence, got a bowl of ramen for dinner (not bad, but Ippudo NY has nothing to worry about) and hung out with my friend Pete for a little while before going to bed.

Saturday morning I dawdled a little bit before finally leaving the house at around eleven. On the agenda was exploring the Gavinana neighbourhood of Florence, in the Oltrarno. So, a bit of backstory: a couple of weeks ago, when I first met my editor at the Florentine, Alexandra, I asked her if the Oltrarno was like the Brooklyn of Florence. She simply chuckled, a bit derisively, and said, "It wishes it was." Anyways, I went 'home,' so to speak, on Saturday, to a neighbourhood that really did sound a little bit like Brooklyn. Gavinana was pretty cool, though the consequence of arriving on a Saturday afternoon was that almost all the stores I had read about were in siesta, and I had to kill time in a piazza for nearly an hour, waiting for everything to re-open. The stores were cool, though. There is a vintage store there called 'Velvet Goldmine' (+1, duh) where I tried on this wonderful orange, 80s, suede dress that almost fit. It was one of those occasions where you try something on and instantly knew that it tragically doesn't fit you in an un-alterable way, thus it was a catastrophe. It had a scoop back, and massive shoulder pads, too. Oh, I am tearing up a little bit even thinking about it. And I also found a cute (expensive) little shoe store, where I had to resist buying Sigerson Morrison flats. Le sigh. After wandering about for a little bit longer, I climbed up to the piazzale Michelangelo and the church of San Miniato al Monte, where you can get a wonderful panorama of the city, and watched the sunset there. Wonderful.

I met Katie for dinner after climbing down from San Miniato; we went to this 'northern European' market phenomenon in piazza Santa Croce and ate macaroons, gouda, gummies, and Polish sausage with sauerkraut ??? Trust me, it seemed like a good idea at the time. And verily, my stomach didn't like me very much later that night. We sat on the steps of Santa Croce for a bit afterwards, talkin' and judgin' and good things like that; contemplated asking all the girls on our program who brought last season's Tory Burch flats if they were wearing last season's Tory Burch flats, you know. There, we also got accosted by our first oh-so-sleazy Italian man that would not take a hint. He was the kind of guy that everyone has warned us about from before. Anyways, he finally got the idea that we were in no way interested, and we left because it was getting exceedingly cold outside.

I woke up at nine on Sunday morning, and could not fall back asleep. So instead, I decided the appropriate thing to do was to go work out... I know. Thus I jogged. Up to San Miniato, again. Just for reference's sake, it's 4.6 kilometers from my house. Up an enormous hill. And you all know that I have been sedentary for the vast majority of my twenty years. Thus this morning, I woke up and I wanted to die a little bit, even more than usual on a cold Monday morning. But the jog itself was worth it. I ran/jogged/power walked all the way down via Matteoti, crossed the ponte San Niccoló and up the hill to first piazzale Michelangelo and then San Miniato. On the way down, I ran through part of the Oltrarno and re-crossed the Arno at the ponte Santa Trinita. Then I jogged down via Tornabuoni (like the Boulevard Haussmann or Champs d'Élysées of Florence), through the piazza del Duomo (tourist roulette, ick) and through piazza SS Annunziata, where a 'mercato ceramica' (ceramics market) was going on, also excellent. I might have run... nearly ten kilometers yesterday?

Wow. That got out of hand quickly. I guess even low key weekends in foreign countries are packed to the gills in terms of blog-entry volume.