From Meal to Meal: Where's Our Next Meal Coming From?

From Steve's point of view, the food and wine are among the main reasons we come to Europe. I also love the food and wine but sometimes I wish it didn't keep presenting itself so relentlessly and unceasingly, aided by Steve's assiduous study of the Guide Michelin and the websites of restaurants he has under consideration.

Breakfast at the apartment is quick, easy and manageable, and it is our general intention to have only one large restaurant meal per day, preferably midday, and to eat a light supper in the apartment. This goal is only partially met, however, because, well, it sometimes just seems impossible to limit ourselves in that way. We have acquired a number of favorite restaurants in the course of our multiple stays in Florence, and of course we want to try new places too, and have thereby acquired two new favorites to add to the previous list.

Downstairs from our Florence apartment, a due passi as they say (two steps away), we were confronted regularly by a gelateria that is supposed to be the best in the city. There is almost always a long line outside the tiny shop, and in the first week of our stay there I had more gelati (five) than I allowed myself in previous entire stays of a month or more; this was partly but not entirely due to the presence of Juliet, who likes gelato a lot. (She returned to Wyoming on our last day in Florence.)

In Siena also, even though we've been there less frequently than to Florence, and for much shorter stays, there are restaurants we've liked in the past, and we went to all of those, I believe, in this five-day sojourn, in addition to several new finds. And most of the time everything sounds so delicious that we end up having three courses, occasionally four, and that nearly always requires a bottle of wine, occasionally different wines by the glass, hardly ever no wine at all. (And Steve enjoys checking out the wine departments in local stores, and conversations with sommeliers. Below, he's studying the wine list in preparation for such a conversation.) In consequence I am sure that in spite of the vast amounts of walking we've done, I have gained back all or most of the seven pounds I managed to lose in the first three months of this year ... but summer and time for my recumbent tricycle will be here very soon, and I'll work it off again.

At lunch the other day, Steve said, "This what being a tourist in Italy is all about: do a little touring, have a nice meal, do a little more touring, have another nice meal." We definitely lived to eat, rather than eating to live, for the duration of the trip.

--- Now that we are back in Wyoming (this post has been developing since early in the trip, and now we're at home, so it's not written from any one consistent point in time) we've mounted the bathroom scales and received the bad news about how much our month of indulgence has increased our avoirdupois, but in the four days since our return we've resumed our prior healthier eating habits (no wine, no bread, no cheese, just about nothing with sugar in it, mostly plant-based--as well as much less salt than restaurants customarily add) and the trend is now downward again. We have no regrets about everything we ate!