January 2015 – Fennyblack

Chocolate on Sunday, nothing else.

It was Sunday afternoon, after a long long Saturday night..

Just woke up late – obviously 🙂
Going out for shopping? Buy some new shoes? Just have a walk around?
Stop thinking, it’s time for a chocolate, very hot chocolate to keep this Sunday alive,
in a total relaxing place and enjoy the mood it could give you.

The answer was ‘Hemingway’. That little chocolate place in Piazza del Carmine, Florence. Once I saw it, but I didn’t stop there. But on last Sunday it was the perfect idea.
Well, now the ‘piazza’ should be also better than before, because the parking has been removed and it’s completely a pedestrian area, wonderful.

And wonderful is the smell you can eat just entering the place. Hemingway, why Hemingway? Was he passionated about chocolate, a chocolate-addicted? Wrote he about chocolate? I really don’t know.
And then the menu, where you can read about it.
Just a little research to discover this little emotional instant in Hemingway life:
…On the night of July 8, 1918, Hemingway was struck by an Austrian mortar shell while handing out chocolate to Italian soldiers in a dugout. The blow knocked him unconscious and buried him in the earth of the dugout; fragments of shell entered his right foot and his knee and struck his thighs, scalp and hand. Two Italian soldiers standing between Hemingway and the shell’s point of impact were not so lucky, however: one was killed instantly and another had both his legs blown off and died soon afterwards. Hemingway’s friend Ted Brumbach, who visited him in the hospital, wrote to Hemingway’s parents that: A third Italian was badly wounded and this one Ernest, after he had regained consciousness, picked up on his back and carried to the first aid dugout. He says he did not remember how he got there, nor that he carried the man, until the next day, when an Italian officer told him all about it and said that it had been voted to give him a valor medal for the act. As Brumbach reported, Hemingway was awarded an Italian medal of valor, the Croce de Guerra, for his service. As he wrote in his own letter home after the incident: Everything is fine and I am very comfortable and one of the best surgeons in Milan is looking after my wounds.

Hemingway’s experiences in Italy during World War I would become an integral part of his larger-than-life persona, as well as the material for one of his best-loved novels, A Farewell to Arms, which chronicles the love of a young American ambulance driver for a beautiful English nurse on the Italian front during the Great War.

Here’s the explanation.

And now enjoy the dark side of this post, from the very Belgian dark chocolate 99% (really hard to finish it!), to the less one 72%:

Belgian dark chocolate 72% in the back (sorry I missed this picture!)

oh, whipped cream really helped to enjoy them better 🙂

And chocolate at your disposal is in every shape and color and taste and flavor: bonbons, pralines, chocolate spoons, gianduia, macarons (or macarals?), chocolate with liqueur or grappa…

and let’s finish with a view of the place:

If you have some Sunday afternoons to spend in a relaxing place and mood, just try this chocolate bar and its wonderful chocolate, maybe avoid the 99%! or be sure to have also 2, 3 bottles of water with you – mouth dried up – .

Bright colors for Indian celebrations, spicy food and digestive sweets

How to find an Indian mood in Florence?

Just going to Via Guelfa, in a very comfortable and welcoming restaurant:

Indian restaurant - Royal India — Indian restaurant – Royal India

It’s the first time for an Indian taste here, so maybe it’s better to have the fixed-price menu and enjoy several dishes, spicy creams, tikka chicken, vegetables, flavored rice and, obviously, tandoori chicken. Typical products to remember: Pappadam and Puri, two kind of flat bread.

In the meantime, let’s see the place: all those colors drew my attention, green, purple, red, yellow, like the original pigments.

Then, here you are some particular staff shown on the shelf, like these turbans:

Actually, the traditional names for Indian turbans are ‘Safa‘ or ‘Pagri‘, depending on the kind of tissue they are made of. And generally, the colors depend on the kind of celebration you’re going to have: weddings, birthday or obviously, pale colors as brown and blue for unhappy ceremonies.

Well, let’s finish with the traditional Indian black tea named ‘masala chai‘ and typical desserts (almost based on sugar and coconut) and colorful sweets you’re served at the end of the dinner, in order to help you to digest:

Traditional Tuscany: fiorentina? Chianina? Cantina? what else?

Yes here we are, the second part of out tour in the countryside of Tuscany (near Arezzo) going until the upper side of Umbria. Enjoy for example, this little fiorentina, fresh meat from poor Tuscan-rooted beef:

Then, it comes the best hamburger you can find in this area: Crispi’s Chianina hamburger. It looks like a classical McDonald’s one, but it isn’t, I swear it.

let me also add this picture, it’s the one I prefer. It’s named ‘Lo sfondo’ that is to say you will have that sense of happiness while eating it and stomachache just after it 🙂

Chianina burger: 'Lo Sfondo' — Chianina burger: ‘Lo Sfondo’

And now let’s stop thinking about food, and have a look to some souvenirs you can get while going all around: magnets representing those landscapes and fields you can find on your road, sign about famous films run in those areas (as the one shown in the picture below: New Moon, Twilight), postcards about cantinas (the place where wine is produced) and historical monuments…

Tuscan souvenirs: postcards, magnets, posters

and then the most particular picture: a poster about the different kind of glasses, with different shapes and glass: generally they are linked to a particular kind of wine. Wine experts always say that there’s a only kind of glass for a specific wine, have a look here:

poster about wine and glasses: the kind of glass you use is related to the kind of wine you’re going to drink

Finally, let’s have a good Italian coffee, together with some special chocolate becoming exactly from their best production known all over the world: baci perugina frim Perugia

Italian Coffee in Montepulciano (La Briciola restaurant)

chocolate from Perugia ('baci perugina' are the most popular in the world) — chocolate from Perugia (‘baci perugina’ are the most popular in the world)

Ending with a wonderful panorama

Escape: Tuscan countryside

Yes I was escaping, flying away from the city, just for a brief wend.

But it was like going back home, in the countryside of a wonderful area as Tuscany.

That’s why I want to share some pictures with you, to offer you an escape, going deepen in the fields and trees and sun and weird moments of life.

Let’s start the tour from a little town near Arezzo, named Civitella Val di Chiana (exactly where the popular ‘chianina’ is made). Here you are some little snapshots of a huge landscape:

Tuscany - Civitella Val di Chiana — Tuscany – Civitella Val di Chiana

and then, something more particular and weird…

for example, think about those little towns that became popular thanks to their homemade products, as cheese and wine..

The following are Montepulciano’s ‘cantina’ views:

Montepulciano: Ercolani's cantina (1988) — Montepulciano: Ercolani’s cantina (1988)

and the to finish this brief tour (actually it lasted at least 1 hour), here you are the perfect end:

products of Tuscany: wine, cheese, homemade jam, particular smoked ham, lots of..

to finish, just ring the bell if you want to book and taste and enjoy…

Enjoy the rest of the trip in the next article!

– coming soon –

Florence: towards the Dome

It was my ordinary walk. I just want to share some nice shots I took while walking towards the Dome, not from the side that everybody knows – from Santa Maria Novella station – but from the back, through Via dell’Oriuolo. Here you are my walk, enjoy it by the pictures and in reality too, if you have this chance!

Just after two minutes, here you are what appears in front of you:

Now the Dome is very near to my camera, let’s zoom in

And finally, here you are the great view

So amazing… Just staring at it.