2 Euro Panettone

Tastes just as good as the 20 euro variety...

I LOVE Italy.

Chains of Love

Amore conquers all....even the carabinieri.

After the local police cut all the love locks off the fence around the Cellini statue on Ponte Vecchio, Italian youth valiantly pressed on:

They moved around the corner and adorned this chain outside the Uffizzi with their declarations of love.

Taking out the Trash

Has a whole new meaning with these space-age contraptions. Firenze's mayor is taking a page from less garbage-challenged European countries and trying to train locals to deposit their refuse underground.

I can't blame him. They look--and smell--much nicer than the steaming, stanking rows of dumpsters we've gotten used to. "Beauty + Respect" indeed.

Still, I have yet to see anyone using them. They're a little intimidating.

Street Art--Italian Style

Is it just me? Or is there an uncanny resemblance between this first station of the cross at the steps to Piazzale Michelangelo and this "do not enter" sign near Piazza Ferucci?

Could be an incredible coincidence.....OR, the city has hired the same modern artist who did the religious art to create street art.

Only in Italy.

Ugly Americans

Americans get the brunt of Italians' disdain for tourists (this despite the place being overrun by entitled Brits for two centuries, but I digress) and most of the blame rests with Yankee students run amok.

Italian restaurateurs tell stories of prissy daughters who go to lunch with their parents for their first day in Florence. By the next night, after the parents are gone, the girl is puking in the street after much too much to drink. Who can resist a legal drinking age of 16? Not us!

So...the city is opening a sort of community center at Palazzo Giovane to keep foreign students out of trouble: "We want to offer a unique experience of citizenship to these young people and not a 'Disneyland' ride through a world of globalized partying, where context is cancelled in the haze of alcohol and the particulars of such an experience are lost in a drunken stupor," wrote Cristina Giachi in The Florentine.

Sigh.

Getting it

They say that understanding humor is one of the last steps to learning a new language. So....when I giggled a bit at these notepads, I felt like I'd finally arrived.

Get it? Double-o-sette? (Fette are slices...)