Zio Gigi in Florence

Searching on tripadvisor for dinner places (please take reviews with a pinch of salt. actually, maybe a gallon. depending on who writes them. just. try. reading. the. singapore. ones. the horrors! :p)

Zio Gigi was in the top twenties, located behind the musee duomo. It was a long walk to dinner. Maybe it just felt long because we were ravenous! And we had a cause to celebrate!

My almost twenty seventh birthday, their twenty eighth wedding anniversary. :)

Meat for mains. Dad is not the most adventurous when it comes to western food (in this case, Italian food). But with the many courses of a dinner order in Italy, if you order a meat, you basically just get meat. It is unlike the side salad and fries that we are very accustomed to back here at home.

Dad had to add on a side order of fries to feel like he ate a proper meal. Maybe that's his vegetable excuse. :) The meats were nicely grilled- check out the lovely char grilled lines. Not overcooked. The chicken was juicy and tender but the pork was a little dry, perhaps due to the lean quality of the meat.

Our first attempt at an order of gnocchi. It was. GOOD. Like crazily good. The potato gnocchi was cooked with just the right amount of bite. And the sauce was like molten gold. Not that I think molten gold might be appetizing at all but it was -that- kind of richness on your tongue once you take a bite of that baked goodness. Very filling. More excuses to share. :)

These tagliatelle ribbons were cooked al dente and tossed in a tomato based gravy of wild boar (!) meat. I know. How does that taste! It was. Meaty. There's no other suitable way of describing it. In the menu, it states that the wild boar meat is frozen meat. Nope, it did not taste frozen. It tasted like a cross between pork and beef and infused with tomato flavour for a tasty and juicy bite. Definitely for red meat lovers.

And this is what love looks like to me. :)

Happy anniversary.

A first in Italy and more in the years to come.

Home for the weekend :)

Waking up to takeaway chicken rice are the stuff dreams are made of. Just read the International Herald Tribune on my flight home and this article spoke volumes to me. It was entitled Time, Distance and Clarity and it started off about the sky looking bluer than it does almost anywhere else in Rome. I concur. And I continued to peruse the rest of the article. I've gotten used to traveling since I was young what with my mother's line of profession. And I'm blessed by my widened perspective of the world with my travels. But travels are for short periods of time. You get home before you really miss it. Then there was the exchange programme.

A chance of a lifetime (well, it is if you only applied for it once in your life) to McGill. No, it wasn't my first choice. UBC was. And I haven't heard of McGill before. And what a mistake I almost made not wanting to go. So I went. For two whole months all I saw was the side gates of campus and home. Tears more than threatened me in the day in between classes and boy did they overwhelm me in the nights. I called home daily. Even if conversations revolved around the weather and my meals. Fall was pretty with its colours. Life was good with pasta and potato meals. Good lecturers, even getting to make some friends. But. I still wanted to go home. One day after class, I took the main gates out and walked myself to Chinatown. The discovery of preserved radish, Chinese longevity noodles and packaged moon cakes were a turning point. I skipped home. Buildings looked great. I read up on the places to go, I even accepted an invite to the tallest bar in town for Halloween. Life was good. I just never noticed nor appreciated it. The sorrow of having wasted two months lies there. The writer hit it spot on when he wrote, "But it is also true that we're often plain oblivious to the scenery right in front of us. By being closest, it's farthest away."

Then there was Ponte Vecchio in Florence. I read up the guides, found it as one of the top ten things in Florence to see. I wanted to go. I had to right? Then here comes my brother. "why are we looking for this? Just because it's a World War Two survivor? What about the Kranji War Memorial, Fort Siloso. Those are from the WW II too and I don't see anyone rushing to see it?" then it got me. It's a tourist thing. I mean I've seen these sites since I'm taking national education/social studies in school. But what if I wasn't. Would I visit them? It's like a responsibility of a tourist. See the top ten. Do what everyone else has done. As if it was a trip requirement. I'm kicking myself for missing the Sunday markets just to go to the malls with my mum.

But at the end of the day, I'm thankful for every trip that I've gone on. It's never the same. Might be the company. Might be the sites. Could be the weather. Would be largely based on my attitudes. Bangkok year on year is never the same. Travel while you can. I know I'd do that as long as my legs could carry me. Hey, you can't carry money to the grave. Might as well spend it seeing the world. Living the life of a global traveller. So much to see, things to do, places to go. I'm looking forward to Bangkok on Monday already :)