September 7th

Jet lag day.   I slept until 3 AM then was wide awake.  I ended up walking around till 6 AM.  That time of the morning there are only workers and Jet lagged American’s were up.  Linda, was a trooper.  She seemed to adjust to the time shift and slept pretty well the whole night. Went to the Mercado Centrale.  Lot’s of great meat and produce.  I’ll spare you the photos of zuccine flowers and porcini mushrooms.  For lunch we went to Trattoria Mario’s near the Mercado.  The food was inconsistent here but that may have had a lot to do with what we ordered.   We had a starter of figs and procuitto, that was great.  The black and white figs were perfectly ripe, very sweet.  Great complement to the saltiness of the procuitto.   I’d been longing for Bolito Misto with salsa verde, a Florentine classic, so I ordered that while Linda ordered the Macarroni con ragu.  I think I’m taking bolito misto off my list of lusted after foods.  It was OK, but not something I’ll be making for dinner guests.  Dispite the less than stellar food, the experinec at Trattoria Mario was very exiting.  When we originally walked in it was about 12:15 PM, shortly after they opened and there was only about 3 tables with dinners.  It is a restaurant of about 15 tables.  Some of them 4 tops some of them 6 or 8 tops.  As the restaurant filled up we noticed that they were seating the new guests with the old guests.  Shoving perfect strangers together, who seem to fall right in conversation together as if they were old friends.  Pretty soon the restaurant was crowed with people standing in the doorway and isle, waiting for a table.  Then it was our turn.  The waitress waves at the next future dinners and point them at our table, which was already kind of crowed with plates.  It was a young couple 30ish and I could see as they approached, the woman clutching and “Italy” tour guide.  As they sat down, I said “Boungourno, Soni Americani”.  They said “yes”, to which I replied “great us too”.  We ended up having a nice conversation with this outdoor advertising guy and his attorney wife who were from Arizona.  They were very pleasant dinner company.  After lunch Jet lag hits again a I convinced Linda, who was ready to go, to head back to the hotel for a nap.

For dinner wanted to keep pretty close to home so I had researched some restaurants and we decided on 2 that were within 3 blocks of where we were staying.  We first looked at  was Ristroante da Pennello.  Many times with restaurants here in Italy they like to keep the lights turned way up.  I think it’s a traditional thing that if the lights are dim, you’re trying to hide something.  Linda still finds this kind of off putting feeling that it ruins the ambiance, so we opted to look at our second choice Ristorante Paoli.  The light were somewhat dimmer her so we went in.  A beautiful restaurant with hand stenciled vaulted ceiling and gorgeous renaissance decor.   After looking at the menu, Linda orders “Cappalaccci con noci a pomodor” We didn’t quite know what it was but the waiter tells us tha Cappalcci means “big head”.  I don’t know where they come up with these word but they do.  I ordered tagallini con tartufo nero.  Pasta with black truffles.  I also ordered the lamb chops.  The food here was great.  Linda’s big head were terrific and my tartufo was incredible.  How can go wrong pasta swimming in butter, and there must have been a golf ball size fresh truffle shaved all over this pasta.  I love this dish.  The thing that Linda seemed to like most about this restaurant was that they left her with an entire bowl of fresh grated parmesano cheese.  She could have all she wanted.  Normally in most Italian restaurants, when they serve the pasta, the waiter comes over and rations out the parmesano.  This drives Linda crazy.  I think they consider parmesano to be more of a condiment like salt or pepper and not the prime ingredient.