10 Most Memorable Meals of My Life - Florence

Since Bethany provided the photos below, I will provide the story behind what was for me our most memorable meal in Florence.

Of course, Florence is known for fancy, expensive restaurants... but some of the best food we had there we got from a cafeteria! Just down the street from the Duomo is a place called Ristorante Leonardo. We read about it in our Rick Steves book and thought we would check it out since Rick said it was cheap and quick. We weren't expecting a cafeteria setting where you grab a tray and head down the line and point out to the person behind the counter what you want.

The book said that "Lucciano runs the place with great enthusiasm" and it didn't take us long to figure out who Lucciano was. He was a very kind and vibrant gentleman who dished up the food while a clean-cut kid in his early 20's worked the register. They were the only employees we saw that night, even though the place could probably seat over a hundred people. That night they were serving lasagna (we hadn't had any yet in Italy and I LOVE lasagna). But Lucciano was very well...enthusiastic about the osso bucco. I didn't even know what it was at the time and it seemed strange ordering such an exotic dish in a cafeteria style restaurant, but Lucciano was not to be denied. So we got that too. Both were really really good. And really really cheap. By the time we left the restaurant, I had concocted this backstory that made sense to me: Lucciano was a world-class chef who could be working at any 5-star restaurant in Italy, but he was at heart a man of the people who just wanted to serve the best food at rock-bottom prices, so he opened his own cafeteria in the middle of Florence. Until I hear different, that is what I am going to believe about Lucciano and Ristorante Leonardo.

We wound up going back for lunch another day, the only restaurant we ate at twice in Italy. This was partially due to how affordable it was, as well as how tasty and centrally located it is. If you're ever in Florence on a budget, you gotta go eat there at least once.

A Few Italy Pictures

I haven't posted anything about our vacation to Italy yet, and with the exception of Danny's memorable meal post, our blog hasn't seen pictures from the trip. I won't take the time to write a full journal of the trip, but I will post a few pictures for those who are neither on Facebook or haven't seen the KodakGallery albums. I didn't include the artsy, pretty pictures, but the pictures of the two of us together.

Danny thinks it's hilarious to make weird faces when we take pictures together. This was in the Pantheon in Rome, which was incredible.

At Trevi Fountain in Rome - the legend is that tourists throw a coin over their shoulder and make a wish that they will one day return to Rome.

At the Colosseum



St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican. The Vatican was my favorite site of the whole trip!

In front of the Ponte Vecchio in Florence

With the Duomo in the background. The Duomo church was gorgeous. Pictures don't do it justice!


Taken from the Ponte Vecchio, one of the few I didn't take myself!

An Unusual Week

Recently I've been listening to my dad's sermons regularly. I know I'm biased, but he's done two incredible sermon series in a row. The first was on Spiritual Formation in a Material World and the second on Forgiveness. If you want to listen, either go to www.campbellchurch.org or look up the Campbell Church of Christ podacast on iTunes.

Anyway, God really has a sense of humor. The series on materialism focused on "holding on to things loosely." Not just money and posessions, but anything that's temporary. Holding on to things too tightly is like making a fist - the stress and tension travel all the way up your arm into your neck and shoulders, whereas living with an open hand is much more relaxing. That resonated with me considering I had a reputation in high school for saying "Don't touch my stuff." Sure I've matured, but I'm still pretty posessive of "my stuff." As I said, God has a sense of humor because while I was being inspired to start holding on to things loosely, He was plotting to see if I really meant it.

Now, it really wasn't a bad week. But it was unusual. On Wednesday, our water shut off during my shower. I wasn't really clean and had to improvise by rinsing the shampoo out of my hair with water bottles. I still felt pretty spoiled since the running water I take for granted shut off so I pulled the case of clean water out of the kitchen pantry. After spending the weekend with FCC high schoolers ministering to the homeless in San Francisco, I couldn't complain about my water situation.

Then Thursday, while I was hurrying out of garage to get to a meeting, I took off the side mirror of my car. I'm pretty proud of (and OCD about) my car, so I was pleased with myself for not panicking, throwing the mirror in the trunk, and continuing cautiously to my meeting. I stopped by the Honda shop on my way to work, and miraculously they had a spare mirror in the right model and color! So my car was broken for less than 8 hours and I had a chance to experience that material things are just....things.



Then on Saturday our electricity was off all day (PG&E was working on the neighborhood). It wasn't easy to put on makeup by candlelight, but it was way better than having no shower by regular light. Also on Saturday we discovered that there is a wasp nest in our satellite dish on our balcony! We've found a few wasps near the balcony door but had no idea where they were coming from until it was so hot Saturday that they were buzzing around like crazy. Ewwww! (By the way, it was 80 degrees here all weekend, a record for mid-November. Those not living in California feel free to be jealous.)



So that has been my week of holding on to things loosely. All is well in the Fitelson home and we have a lot to be thankful for! We're especially thankful that in a week we get to meet our niece and spend Thanksgiving in New York with Danny's family! We're also thankful the Cowboys' season might still be alive after beating a division rival yesterday! What a great week.