Florence: Day 2
Although it is by now a proven fact that gelato is superior to ice cream in every way, shape, and form, today I deviated from my normal chocolate cup and went out on a limb at the Magnum store. I knew that Magnum ice cream bars were Italian, but I thought they were just sold in grocery stores with sensual Rachel Bilson ads. This is not the case in Florence, where they have a whole store where you can make custom ice cream bars!
I ordered one with goji berries, but then she told me to pick three toppings and I panicked and added meringue and rose petals, resulting in this monstrous thing:
It was actually pretty good.
One of the things that you’re just supposed to do in Florence apparently is buy some leather shoes, which is easy, because there’s 5020394 shoe vendors. But we did the sensible thing and Googled the best shoemaker in Florence, leading us to Sabatini’s tiny one room shop. My mom scored some great leather sandals, and I got leather regular shoes.
After a morning of ice cream and shopping, we had to scurry off to our afternoon wine tour in Tuscany. Before I go any further, let me explain what I expected to go down on this tour, due to the online description and what I was deliberately led to believe. I thought we were going to tour a castle, swing by a vineyard, sample (keyword: SAMPLE) a bit (keyword: BIT) of wine, eat some cheeses, stop by a cute little village, and overall have a classy little afternoon in Tuscany. I figured that I might order a cheap bottle to send to a friend to drink with her over dinner when I get back.
This is not what happened.
First off, THERE WAS NO CASTLE. The tour guide promised us a castle and did not deliver. But second off, I didn’t care that there was no castle because I was far too drunk to tour one anyways. This was not a “wine sampling” tour. This was a drink-so-much-wine-that-you-panic-and-forget-where-the-tour-bus-is-tour.
We started off with a glass of rosé in the wine cellar, and it was deliciously smooth, almost like drinking water. I am used to only having cheap wine from QFC on Bachelor/ette Mondays, so this was a big step up for me. We were then led to a table where we sat with a family from Long Island and a couple from Idaho. Our table had the fewest people, creating a higher wine:person ratio than all the other tables.
This is where things get fuzzy. I don’t remember what any of the wines were, but the first one was paired with cheese and pepper jelly. It was soooooooo good. My palate was alive! The cheese and wine complemented each other perfectly! I finally understand wine pairings! Everything makes sense! We all had a second glass.
The next wine was a bit smokier and was paired with meat. I had the same magical experience as the first time. The next one was with this delicious bread that had garlic, olive oil, and salt on it. I don’t remember what it tasted like, only that the sommelier referred to it as “Richard Gere” because it was so smooth.
By this point, I’m five glasses in and am having trouble holding up a conversation with the Idaho guy on the merits of outdoor retail space in cities versus traditional suburban shopping malls. I remember saying something approximating, “I like streets and I like having people on streets that I like,” which is actually quite accurate. My mom is laughing hysterically with the Long Island mother. I have more wine.
We finished the tasting with a dessert wine and biscotti. I remember this one clearly because it tasted like liquidized raisins. It was delicious but a bit strong, which didn’t matter much by this point. Then, the sommelier comes out with this huge paper checklist and expects us to purchase some of her wine right then and there. I feel a little bit duped, as she got me drunk and clearly incapable of making reasonable, check-list based decisions before she decided to sell me her wine. I didn’t end up ordering any and stumbled back behind the Idahoans who miraculously remembered where the tour bus was.
By this point, you’d think the day would be done. Everyone is drunk. Some people have purchased and now are carrying around huge bottles of wine. It’s time to go back to the hotel room for a nap. But no. We have one last stop in some tiny store in village in the middle of God-knows-where at which we have even more wine, this time a Chardonnay. I seem to remember it being really good. My mom passed me the rest of her glass and told me to finish it off, which I did obligingly. Then we giggled and took drunken pictures before being loaded back up on the tour bus.
The problem with a one hour drive through the Tuscan countryside is that there is nothing to do besides drunk text your friends and family. I sent out half-constructed sentences by the dozen, trying to persuade a friend to fly to Greece in December and promising to buy another some Tuscan cheese, not realizing that it makes no sense to carry around cheese in my backpack for a month. My mom drunk-Instagrammed a picture “#goodwineintuscany.”
When we finally got back in Florence, I proposed that we take a cab, but my mom insisted that a walk “would be good for us.” She was right, since we were able to stop for a quick gelato before stumbling all the way back and crashing facedown into my bed, forming some harsh words for my TripAdvisor review as I drifted off to sleep.