Bern & Luzern

The Bern bear city symbol on a ginger cake
I've been completely pathetic putting up the photos of what-we-ate-in-Europe, and I'm annoyed with myself. I'm not going to abandon this project halfway (or 1/4 way in because there's about another 6 weeks to go!) so I'm resuming it. Even if I only post photos without text, at least I'm finishing something I started!
After Payerne in western-French-speaking Switzerland we stopped for lunch in Bern, only 30 minutes away. Even though it's so close, suddenly everything was in German! In Payerne German was seen as something very foreign, and English even more so, but a few miles down the road it was a different story. Switzerland is fascinating; I love the place.

We were let loose for an hour or so to look around and grab something to eat. I soon discovered in the local market that I was able to communicate in French; in this area where the linguistic borders are so close, most people are at least bi-lingual. And as Bern is the Swiss capital, all the official languages are spoken and understood, even if the signs are in German. I didn't have as much success communicating in Italian, though!
I really liked Bern - it feels more like a small bustling market town than a national capital, and I guess that's because of the unique nature of the Swiss government, with 7 premiers of the cantons sharing the leadership position, and the function of the annual president mainly limited to greeting people at airports.
Miniature vegetables were all over the marketplaces of Europe this time of year. We couldn't figure out the allure of the miniature vegetable. I suspected they were used as autumn table decorations, but does anybody have a more detailed explanation?

The people of Bern have a violent history of eating small babies!

We spent too long wandering around the market and decided to get things to eat on the bus. There were about 10 cheese stalls, so we choose one at random and bought some vacherin and some truffle infused brie. Hoooeyy! Truffle infused brie! My friend who shared this with me is still sending messages raving about it, from her new home in the UK!
You just can't buy brie this ripe in Australia. Look at it - it's oozing! In the centre was another layer of cheese mixed with chopped truffles. This stuff nearly sent us falling to the floor in ecstasy...not a safe thing when driving on windy Swiss roads!

I bought a few day-old crusty rolls and we actually managed to get through that entire hunk of cheese, plus the vacherin. We also bought some local green apples to cut through the richness, and that simple lunch on the bus was a definite food highlight of the whole trip.

We had 2 nights in Luzern, compared to the one hour in Bern, but there are hardly any foodie photos we took. The weather turned rainy and cool for the first time in the trip there, and we were feeling a bit tired, so it was a quiet few days. I was billeted on my own with a student, in a typical student-hovel apartment. I lugged by bags on 3 local buses, hoiked them up 6 flights of stairs in the rain, was shown to my mattress on the floor and was told there wasn't any food in the house for dinner; would I like packet soup or a bowl of cereal? At 4am the housemate came home, newly broken up with his girlfriend, rolling drunk and surrounded by girls and decided to play German heavy-metal and cook spaghetti!! He didn't know there was a visiting Australian in the next room who had to get up in 3 hours to sing at church. Many people might have cried at this stage - I started to laugh and knew I'd look back on this with a smile. The next night I came home to find a pot-smoking party going on around my bed! Fabulous. But actually I had a great time staying with the students, experiencing real Swiss life, and learning a lot about Swiss culture and politics. I didn't have to worry about keeping the bathroom fanatically clean, either! Plus I got to try a variety of flavoured yoghurts, which was all they had in the fridge. Yoghurt in Switzerland isn't considered solely a health food, like here, so you can get choc chip cookie dough yoghurt, chestnut puree yoghurt, butterscotch etc.etc. Yum!

After our evening concert we were taken out for dinner to a Swiss restaurant. Above is the winner of the biggest-sausage-on-tour competition. I shared the fondue with Belinda but looking at that sausage and crispy roesti, I wish I'd chosen that instead.

Here's our Fondue For Two. It was exciting for the first 5 minutes in that "I'm really in Switzerland and eating cheese fondue" kind of way, and then it lost its spark. The only thing we had to dip in it was soft brown bread. Romance aside, a meal of bread and a bloody great pot of melted cheese is actually a bit dull! When I've had fondue here, we've had a variety of vegetables to dip in alongside the bread, which livens up the event. If our bread was toasted it would have at least provided a textural contrast, but the soft bread and soft cheese were a bit too similar. After about 10 minutes Belinda said "This isn't exciting any more".
I would never say to anybody not to have fondue in Switzerland; it's something you definitely have to do, but once is probably enough (I've done it twice now, and am happy to expand into the repertoire of enormous sausages and potato pancakes now!)

Here's a very early morning photo of gorgeous Luzern; lake, Totentanz bridge, tower, mountains surrounding the whole place... Hence the constant daily rain!!

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Cailler Chocolate Factory

In my Payerne post I dropped a comment that we were to visit a Swiss chocolate factory, but wrote nothing more. I thought that such a note-worthy, life-changing experience deserved its own post, of course...
I'd been looking forward to this for months, ever since I discovered the location of Payerne, and did lots of internet research. I wrote emails to our contact about how best we could fit in a visit on the way, and polled group members about who was interested in visiting, I even had an argument with the tour committee about whether we should go or not (amazingly there are people in this world who don't like chocolate, and don't think anyone should either. Geez, even if you don't want to eat the chocolate, it's part of the local history and culture!), which resulted in splinter faction group of aspiring chocolate factory visitors devising plans to sweet talk our bus driver into making an unscheduled detour!
In the end our hosts included a visit in our list of official activities. Those who didn't want to go could check out the Roman ruins. Ruins - bah! We saw ruins in Rome! ;-)

The Cailler chocolate factory is about 45 minutes from Payerne, in the town of Broc - very close to the town of Gruyeres, where the cheese is from. It's part of the Nestle stable of companies, based in nearby Vevey, and after we'd arrived, a few people saw the Nestle sign and complained "you mean, we travelled all this way just to eat Nestle chocolate??!" Nestle brand chocolates in Australia are really nothing special. Cailler has nothing to do with that. It has always been a smaller-scale manufacturer that was bought out by Nestle sometime in the past. Apparently only 40% of its production is exported, so it's not very well known outside Switzerland, adding to its allure for me. Unique presents for people back home!

We were running to a tight schedule without time to spare that afternoon, and I had read many accounts of the delights of the tasting room. I'd heard rumours of all-you-can-eat Swiss chocolate. I looked at my watch and tapped my foot at the laggers straggling off the bus. We were given a guide and taken on a tour, which I'm sure would have been more interesting if I hadn't been looking at my watch and tapping my feet. Tasting room, people! Get a move on. Stop asking stupid questions! Yes, yes, precision equipment, yes, yes, proud and noble history of chocolate making, yep, discovery of crushed hazelnuts, no, you don't want to watch the video of historical production techniques, c'mon people, MOVE IT, MOVE IT!!!
I was told later that each time my friends looked for me I was standing the near the exit door looked pained.
Here's a token photo I took before the tasting room. Yes, it's a giant lump of cocoa butter. It's FAT, people. Solid FAT. We could taste bits if we wanted (yes, I want!) and it was not nice. Like scraping your fingernail through lard. We were told that white chocolate is made entirely of this cocoa butter, therefore when you are eating white chocolate, you are essentially eating solid fat. This was imparted to us in a very dispassionate way, but the looks of horror on peoples' faces was priceless.

Here's a lump of solid fat cocoa butter floating in a bucket of cocoa beans. Not for any real purpose. We could also taste the cocoa beans, and they really didn't taste very nice! Turning those beans into the chocolate we eat was a huge process of discovery. Pity I didn't sit and reflect on this magnificence because I was standing by the exit door tapping my foot....

And here we are. It was like walking into dreamland. Into every childs' Willy Wonka dream. Row and rows of chocolate there for you to grab and stuff into your mouth. I was off and at it before the guide even got into the room to give us the low-down, standing in front of me. I tried to looked innocent and smile wihout opening my lips and revealing chocolate stained teeth, nodding my head in sympathy when she described bus loads of people who stuff chocolate into their pockets and run away. Oh! I'd never thought of doing that! (damn). Yes, we could eat as much as we wanted, and we could stay as long as we wanted; they would even set up a camp bed in the room if we wanted (ooh, really? Where do you keep it?), but we were not allowed to take any away with us. They also told us there was absolutely no expectation on us that we would buy anything, which of course made me decide I would.
We only had about 10 minutes, so we were OFF!

On these tables is an example of every type of chocolate Cailler makes, except for the blocks. Each tray carried examples of a certain product or line. Go for it, people!

This selection is known as Femina. They were soft pralines - more nougat than chocolate. I liked these, but I'm not so Femina. I like a bit more dark chocolate and more chunks. I was interested to learn that the Swiss prefer milk chocolate over the bitterness of dark, which is why Swiss milk chocolate is so good. Also, you can only be guaranteed of the chocolate using real milk and cream (no powdered stuff) when you buy Swiss or Belgian chocolate.

These were the Ambassador range. I bought a box of these to bring home, which I posted from London 10 weeks ago, and still haven't received. I hate to think of the condition they'll be in when I get them. This selection had the most amazing flavour I tried - a dark chocolate filled with burnt caramel. Really burnt. It was incredible - I kept going back for more. I recommended it to a friend who immediately spat it into the bin. Evidently strong flavours like that aren't to everybody's taste!

Plain chocolate square which got rather overlooked in the shadow of everything else.
In 10-15 minutes we all ate FAR TOO MUCH chocolate. I can't say I was surprised. We all walked out of the room feeling a bit green and queasy, but what an amazing experience it was! Let loose in the shop, we all stocked up - and found some really interesting blocks with flavourings of green tea, black pepper, orange and cocoa nibs etc. I'd report on those but they're sitting on a ship somewhere in the Indian ocean!!

The view walking out of the factory back to the bus. Picture perfect, n'est-ce-pas?

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Payerne

Payerne was the beginning of our Festival Of Cheese. And chocolate. Belinda said she was going to write a book about how to lose weight with cheese and chocolate. Using the choir as a test case. If our cholesterol wasn't higher by the end of our Swiss week, then I'll eat another fondue.
Payerne is in western French-speaking Switzerland. We drove past Montreux and near Lausanne to get there. It's a tiny little place of non-importance, set in the picturesque Broye valley. This is not the Switzerland of mountains. This is the Switzerland of rolling pastures and dairy cattle supplying the milk to the many chocolate and cheese factories around the place. Check out that scenery - can't you just imagine the milk the cows eating that grass would make?!

11th century Payerne abbey
We were hosted by members of a local choir, who were the sweetest people. They ranged from school teachers to farmers, and those of us who weren't billeted with families in town, stayed on working dairy farms, supplying the milk to the chocolate factories! In that part of Switzerland English is not so widely spoken, so most of us got to try out our high-school French vocab. Being hosted gives you such a wonderful opportunity to really absorb the local culture and make new friends, and our time in Payerne was a definitely a highlight of the tour.
There's not a lot in Payerne, but it does have an amazing 11th century abbey, and Roman ruins. Our hosts organised our time, and we started the day touring the abbey and hearing to an organ recital. I kept touching the stones trying to absorb the fact that they'd been there 900 years.

To relax after the recital they took us to the town council wine cellars (do we have those in Australia?!!) for a pre-lunch wine-tasting. Nothing like wine at 11am! My memory is a bit hazy (!) but I believe the wine was local, Broye-valley Swiss wine. Property of the town council. A nice way to start lunch!

Lunch next, in the nearby town of Grand Cours. In the hall of the local primary school, actually. Built 1903, so an atmospheric hall! We walked through another set of winding medieval Swiss streets to get there. Yawn. Yeah, just another set of beautiful medieval Swiss streets....

We had been told we'd be having "some cheese" for lunch. "Some" was an understatement. Having already had cheese for dinner and breakfast, we were in for a lunch of melted cheese. On potatoes. Otherwise known as Raclette. It was very cool! There were long tables set up with many raclette machines, for us to make our own melted cheese. Basically they worked like mini grills. You placed your pre-sliced piece of raclette cheese into the little shovel thing, and placed it under the grill until it melted and then you poured it over your potatoes. Like so....:

Mmmmmm......melty cheese!
Raclette cheese is naturally waxy, and not so nice to eat when cold. It's made to be melted, and it does so really quickly. And we had token greenery too. To offset the fattiness, we had bowls of little pickled gherkins and onions to eat with it, which was actually really appreciated. Just melted cheese on potatoes could get a bit much....

They also gave us local bacon, and in great act-now, ask-later Aussie style we chucked them on top of the machine to grill, like we were making breakfast. We made pretty serious messes on the grill top, before we were told the the bacon usually just gets added to the cheese in the shovels underneath. Oops...
(Belinda took that bacon shot - I really like it)

So, here's a plate of the finished Raclette product. Melted cheese poured over steamed potatoes, alongside a pile of bacon and a few pickles. Knowing we were going to visit a chocolate factory after lunch didn't make us eat any more lightly, to be honest. A light, healthy lunch - not really. Fun - definitely!

After our concert that night the choir members put on a supper for us, in the same school hall, bringing along local specialities they made themselves. Apparently the local food of the Broye valley is The Tart. It was a Tart-a-Palooza! Tarts with onion, tarts with cheese, tarts with bacon, tarts with plums, berry tarts, tarts, TARTS, TARTS!
Beautiful tarts of course, and a lovely atmosphere. Especially when our hosts suddenly broke into local folksongs for us. I don't think there was a dry eye in the house...

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Locarno, Switzerland

View of Madonna del Sasso church and the town of Locarno in the Swiss lakes district.
Our first stop in Switzerland was in the south, in the region called Ticino; Tessin in German. Looking at a map, Ticino is a little blip that extends south into Italy and seems unusually out of place; and historically the area was Italian, but it's been under Swiss rule now for hundreds of years. I love the way the locals have retained their Italianness; it's rare to hear any French or German spoken, unless by visitors from the other cantons.
To all intents and purposes it is Italian: they speak Italian, the climate is Mediterranean, it produces good wine, there's spaghetti and pizza on the menus and excellent gelati shops. However, it also has the neatness and order of the Swiss, a few more German and French signs and the cost of living of the Swiss. So, to us, even though we'd crossed a border it felt like we were still in Italy - until we saw the prices. Suddenly everything was 3 times more expensive. Welcome to Switzerland!

The city of Locarno is perfectly situated on a lake (part of the Italian & Swiss lakes district). Our original intent was to stay in Como and look for George Clooney but...helloooo expensive accommodation! Next idea was Lugano just over the Swiss border, but that was booked out. 3rd choice was Locarno and I'm so pleased that it came through as it was definitely a highlight of the trip. Half the town is built up the mountains nearby, and the other part along the lakeside. It has everything; beautiful old buildings, cobbled alleyways, a large piazza (home to the International Film Festival), yachting, a funicular and cable cars up the mountain. And a casino....where we didn't spend any time!

We went for a movie-star walk by the yachts in the lake at sunset and decided to shell out for a nice dinner at a hotel by the lakeside, rationalising that we were being billeted for the next few days and we wouldn't be paying for meals. After quickly eliminating lamb from our choices (do we want to take out a bank loan?!) we noticed that a local speciality seemed to be rotisserie chicken. Served either with french fries or risotto Milanese (!). Compared to what we'd just come from the dinner seemed pricey, but the food was spectacular and the view of the twinkling lights across the lake and into the mountains was beautiful.

Poultry for sale in a butchers. Heads and feathers intact. Pluck your own...hmmm!

Latest Swiss fashions. You really don't want to know the price....

We found an excellent chocolate shop near the entry to the funicular up to the Madonna del Sasso church. I think it was called Attuale, and I think it was a chain. I'm sure I saw one in Bern...or maybe Luzern. You could buy bags of mixed-flavour offcuts, which is great for somebody like me who can't make a decision and wants to try everything. The chocolate was excellent, as you'd expect from Swiss chocolate. Wish we had chains like this in Melbourne!
Belinda bought a slab of curry chocolate to hand around the bus, which grossed everybody out until they tried it. Milk chocolate with curry seeds sprinkled on top; surprisingly very good!

Piles of chocolate truffles from the same shop.

Market, main town square
I don't know if the local market in the main town square is a weekly event, but we happened to come across it in the morning, and spent some time wandering around. They had the usual trinkets, but the food was where it stood out. We tried everything from pastries, to cheese, to deep fried little fish from the lake to.....

...horsemeat salami. Mmmmm! Well, come on, I HAD to try it!! I knew it would scare people, but horsemeat is still eaten regularly throughout Italy and I wanted to have a taste. And, yeah, I was probably taking my health in my hands by buying unrefrigerated horse sausage covered in flies from a open air stand on a hot day, but I just peeled off the white layer -although I did first wonder if I was supposed to eat it- and took a bite. It wasn't bad at all...maybe a little hairy (OK, you didn't want to know that, did you?). It had a very rich, spicy flavour and felt quite fatty. Although it was small it was too much to eat, and after a few bites, mine sat in the back pocket of my bus seat for a few days while I forgot about it. Yeah, you don't want to know what it looked like a week later.....

A more palatable street-side purchase from a patisserie stand. My friend loves all things chestnut, and this little Mont Blanc cake made with chestnut puree was her dream (no warm horsemeat salami for her...) You even get a bonus view of the garish-coloured seats on our Italian bus - wow. This place was a chain and operated from a stand on the footpath. How I wish we had such a culture in Australia!
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Parma

On the way from Tuscany to Switzerland we stopped for lunch in Parma to check out the cheese. Witness the big Parmesan cheese on display on the street into the old part of town. I've edited out my friend posing beside it in a Homer Simpson drool. Mmm...big parmesan cheese.

Parma was bizarre. It was a weekday lunchtime but the whole town was completely dead! We only had about 90 minutes, so after a fairly mediocre pasta lunch (bit disappointing, that), we wandered around the streets. The Duomo was closed for lunch and there wasn't a single soul in the square or neighbouring streets. It was freaky, like a nuclear bomb had exploded and taken the entire Parma population with it. In reality, everybody was probably home having lunch and a siesta, but it gave a strange, other-worldly feel to the place. We also discovered it's possible to wander Parma without a map, and still find your way back to the bus.

Despite the fairly mediocre pasta from the cafe near the Duomo, they did a pretty good insalata caprese: tomato, mozarella, olive oil and herbs. Every example of this I tried in Italy was good; their tomatoes are just so much better than what we get here. It's hard to go back to lacklustre tomatoes now, and I do know at least one person who has switched to the expensive, vine-ripened variety since his return, even though it's causing pain in his hip pocket.
Some discussion on herbs: I know some of us were disappointed when the insalate came with dried oregano rather than fresh basil, but I think it's pretty standard. I've had it with dried herbs made by Italian relatives, so I don't think it necessarily means it's a more low-rent version (although in this cafe, it probably was!).

One of our friends decided to wander the local market instead of sitting down for lunch, and found a stall with interesting antipasti being made into rolls. Having had more than her share of bread and cheese in the past few days she waved her arms around and managed to indicate she just wanted fillings, not bread. Her point came across and she said it was one of the best lunches she had on the whole trip. Wish I'd joined her! Check out the other local food speciality: Parma ham. Ooooh yum.

Back on the bus, a few people who decided to sight-see rather than sit down for lunch had a picnic enroute. One guy had bought a container of local parmesan he passed around the bus. I took the shot with my phone to send to envious friends ('I'm in the Italian countryside enjoying local parmesan...such are the travails of my life...') as part of my series of SMS photos of European cheeses...
It was excellent cheese. The guy with the shirt sleeve took out his pocket knife and cut up a few local apples to eat with it. Perfect combination.

Confectionary garnering the most comment on the trip. The baboon's bum cake. Apparently a local Parma speciality that unfortunately resembled the genitalia of an ape. We all took bites of this, and naturally in totally mature, grown up style, have a series of 'bum eating' photos.
It was as sweet and garish as it looked. I have no memory of anybody volunteering to finish it!

Unusual soft-drink of the day: Fanta Chinotto flavour. I'm told it was very good. I love seeing examples of local tastes needing to be represented by multi-national companies. Can't see that Fanta marketing that bitter taste to the Americans!

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Siena

So, whereas I didn't have the most wonderful time in Florence, I had the opposite experience in Siena. Love it. Interesting, as the day we went was cool, grey and occasionally pouring down with rain. Plus we had to make our own way by the country bus services with drivers who yell at you (I'm Italian, I yell back) and with a lengthy stopover in the highly crapola town of Poggibonsi; a town as alluring as a homeless man's dribbly shirt. Lovely, helpful staff in the tourist office too...ahem! No clothes washing facilities in the town either, though the espresso was good at the bus station cafe!

But, Siena, when we finally got there, was gorgeous. I know it's a bit fashionable these days to rubbish Florence and prefer Siena (especially to people who only visit Florence), but it is the way I feel, and shared by many others in our group. For one thing, there was a total lack of African-immigrant-sidewalk-fake-handbag-sellers, which made it more relaxing straight away. But, also the winding, cobbled medieval streets rising uphill from the huge main square (the Campo, where the horse race is held twice a year) are perfect to wander through, and inevitable get lost in. We spent a bit on phone calls that day trying to locate which alley people had turned down, and eventually decided it was too hard to get everybody together for lunch, so my friend and I finally re-found the place I had had spotted an hour ago, and had been searching for since. All I can tell you is that it was in a small square near the Campo, on the way to the church where St Catherine's shrivelled head and dessicated thumb are preserved! (lovely pre-lunch viewing). And it was called Renzo, and run by quite rude people. We had to fight for a table from the nazi waitress woman who didn't want to serve people, while the locals rolled their eyes and whispered to us that they only come here for the food.

I was really keen to try some local specialities, and had heard about a local soup called 'ribollita' (i.e. reboiled). It's a thick soup full of vegetables, beans and bread. My friend decided to order it, feeling decidedly in need of vegetables, after a few days of cheese & salami feasts. She really enjoyed this hearty soup, but felt it needed to cook a bit longer to get the flavours really happening; it needed salt.

I ordered a wild boar stew, with vegetables and black olives. The olives tasted like not much, sadly. Like the black washers you get on pizzas. The meat was very interesting. I'd not tasted wild boar before, and imagined it would be really strong and gamey. Not at all; I could really taste that it was from the pig family, and it was just a little more strongly flavoured than chunks of pork. I tried wild boar several times afterwards, in Switzerland and the UK and each time the muted flavour was the same. But as stews go, it was really tasty.

I was also feeling the effects of a diet of cheese and bread, so ordered some roast vegetables, which were excellent. Eggplant, zucchini, capsicum, tomato, garlic...Tasted like something I'd cook at home when on a veggie kick, so I was happy.

Panforte and pasta in the Dolce Siena shop
After spending the afternoon being gobsmacked at the amazing Duomo (easily my favourite ever) and the absolutely incredible music manuscript library, with the most colourful painted ceilings I've seen, we wandered the town, watched local artisans making candles and bread, poked around shops and decided it was time for something sweet. At the bottom of the campo is a shop selling artisanal sweets and local produce. If you've been to Siena, you'll know what I mean when I say it's just to the right of the town hall.

Siena is famous for panforte; a sweetmeat made with lots of candied fruit. It's not nougat, but similar. I've had it with coffee before, and not enjoyed it much, but hey, I was in Siena and they were local so I bought one for our middle-of-the-campo-afternoon-tea. Even though it was drizzling and we were under umbrellas we were going to sit in the Campo and eat our sweets, goddammit!!!
This panforte was different. For one, it was chocolate - mmm. Also, it was very fresh. The ones we get in Australia are definitely not fresh; they've gone a bit hard and chewy, but this was soft and the flavours were clean. I loved it. The others were not so keen, so I got to eat most myself...hehehehe.

The others loved this: Siena is also famous for torrone, a soft, sticky nougat, made with egg whites, sugar and honey. This one was studded with huge chunks of chocolate. It was goood. It was also really sweet! I was happy with my panforte. And I was very happy with Siena.
That night we had a picnic in the hotel dining room of the bits and pieces we bought in town; we had everything from white peaches, to mozzarella fillled with fresh cream to local proscuitto to orange amaretti biscuits; a perfect way to end a excellent day.

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Florence

I hesitate to write it, but I'm not totally enamoured with Florence. Yes, it has glorous architecture and views and amazing art galleries, but it's also chronically crowded, overrun with tourists and a bit smelly. I thought this ten years ago, when I first visited, and my feelings are a bit stronger now. A few people I've spoken with agree that Florence doesn't seem like an Italian city; it's a city of foreigners and tourists. And thousands of damn annoying African immigrants crowding every piece of pavement trying to sell you fake designer handbags and bad commercial artwork. And yet, if you purchase their goods, it's you who will face trouble! A local told us there are signs up (??) around the city informing visitors that it is illegal to purcahse from these street-sellers and you will face a fine if caught. Hmm.
My photos of Florence tend to be filled with thousands of tourists. In the end I gave up and just started photographing the crowds of people. I think Belinda took a great shot of the queue to get onto the Ponte Vecchio! The photo above wasn't taken by me (I was probably ogling David's bottom at the time), but a friend who decided to go for a wander, and found a place selling excellent almond brittle; toasted almonds in toffee, that had enough smokiness to cut through the sugar. Yum! It was late afternoon, and evidently she'd found a quiet spot away from the crowds.

It was a hot day when we were there, and had chosen to spend some time sightseeing before our concert at the English church, not far from the Ponte Vecchio (just near the Ponte Santa Trinitas). Just off the Piazza del Duomo is a place selling pizza by the slice. It's not terribly cheap, but it was pretty good quality, particularly if you got one that had just come out of the oven. The tuna pizza on the left was really excellent; hot, juicy on top and crispy on the bottom with fresh basil and good tomato. The vegetable one on the right was not as succesful. It didn't have cheese and had been sitting around a bit, so it was lukewarm and dry - a bit like foccaccia with a few veggies on top. Didn't finish that one.

We were taken out for dinner by a group of eccentric expat Australians living in Florence, to a very good local restaurant that none of us would be able to find again, because we all got lost numerous times trying to find it! And, as we were eating another 5 course dinner at 11pm, after a day sightseeing in the sun, and a big concert, nobody took photos. What a shame - the fresh skinless salami we tried were incredible, as was the chicken liver crostini and perfect prosciutto. To live in my memory only...

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