April 09, 2007
Pasqua 2007: Firenze
This Easter weekend, Robert and I ran away to Firenze. Unfortunately, Robert was feeling poorly and by Friday evening, when we arrived at the Alberghino, he'd developed a fever.
After spending a delirious Friday night in bed, Robert felt somewhat better on Saturday morning to go on a relaxed walkabout. It was perhaps a blessing in disguise, because it we ended up taking things easy and discovered the quieter, untouristy parts of Firenze.
Firenze
I think Firenze should be renamed to "Little America" or "Little Britain" during Easter weekend. Il centro storico was full of domestic and foreign tourists. On Easter Sunday, you can clearly differentiate the Italians from the tourists: the Italians were dressed impeccably in their immaculate Sunday best. The tourists were all either L.L Bean catalogue variety or MTV Springbreak special; unfortunately, not all dependent on age.
It's a lovely city, but it's way too touristy. Just as I hated London during the summer tourist season, and why I prefer Rotterdam over Amsterdam, I didn't like Firenze for precisely this reason. Milano can get quite touristy but I've never had shopkeepers in Milano greet me in English. Hummm, maybe I'm developing this Milano-vs-other-Italian-cities complex...
We gave the main sights a miss and headed to Giardino Boboli. First tip of the day: queues to Palazzo Pitti and the main entrance of Giardino Boboli can get extremely long. If you go up Corso San Giorgio to where Giardino Boboli and Bardini neighbour one another, there is another entrance with a biglietteria and hardly anyone queues there.
Robert and I lay on the grassy hill overlooking Palazzo Pitti and Firenze. It was wonderful and we fell asleep in the sun like lazy house cats. The park started to fill up around lunchtime, so we left and went to Giardino Bardini, which was smaller and quieter and had an equally stunning view of Firenze.
Sunday morning, we went to the Duomo to see the Scoppio del Carro, an Easter ritual of blowing up an elaborate wagon decorated just for this purpose. Loud bangs, lots of smoke and sparks of fireworks ensues. It was all fun and good to watch, as the crowd gets really enthusiastic. This is followed by a procession around the city center.
After a heavy Sunday lunch, Robert and I hiked up to Villa Strozzi. We found the lovely gardens and again spent some time lazing in the sun. There were families on their Sunday afternoon walks and I noticed people were a lot friendlier and interactive; there were eye contact and cheerful greetings of "Buona Pasqua" and "Buona sera".
We then walked through the hills and olive groves in the dying Sunday sun, with breathtaking views. It was such a lovely Sunday stroll that I felt better about not renting bikes and cycling through the countryside as I had originally planned.
The food
We received a lot of recommendations from friends (thank you Tango, thank you James). We did find all of those places in town, but in the end we didn't eat there. We'll save those places for our next (more) museum-oriented visit, in the fall.
Too bad Robert was still sick so he could hardly taste and smell any of the food he ate! That's torture of the worst kind (for me).
We ate wonderful Tuscan dishes: faraona all'uva con crema di patate (guinea fowl stewed in grapes on creamy potatoes), polenta con al ragu di cinghiale (polenta with ragu of wildboar), ravioli di zucca con amaretti (pumpkin ravioli with amaretti), sformato caldo di patate con ragù di carni bianche o pomodoro (a molded potato flan with a tomato and meat ragu), bistecca alla fiorentina (yay for extra-rare beef!)... Everything was SO good, I was very happy...
Back in Milano
We're still glowing from the weekend we just had... April will be a busy month with Salone del Mobile Milano and plenty of our designer friends flying in and crashing at our place... I love having friends visit...
I'm looking for our next little holiday at the end of April: we're going to Riomaggiore in Cinque Terre for 4 days! Yippeeee....
Posted by Yasmina at 09:35 PM | Comments (5)
December 03, 2006
Monza, Sunday Afternoon
After waking up late on this very gray Sunday, and breakfasting on chocolate panettone, vanilla yoghurt and coffee, we caught a train to Monza. The initial idea was to walk around Parco Monza, but when we got there, we decided it was too cold and rainy to walk in the park. We ended up walking around the shopping streets instead.
We found a Citta del Sole so we bought an inflatable globe, a toy airplane, a wooden car and an Il Piccolo Principe memory game for X. On the phone, X asks us for a toy hammer... but I can hear his mom (my sister) in the background shouting to get him educational toys instead. So it's a sort of compromise.
We keep thinking we must go to Indonesia and see him before he gets too big (to be tickled, held upside-down, spun around and all that good stuff). We spoke to him on the phone yesterday and he keeps asking us where we are. Hence the idea of the inflatable globe, so he can see where we are in relation to his position.
Anyway, I hope next weekend it will be sunny so we can go to the park. :-)
Posted by Yasmina at 07:18 PM | Comments (1)
June 05, 2006
Heliuphant: Urban Street Game
Last week, we were running around town, participating in Alejandro's experience prototype, as he calls it. I was in a team with Aram, who, by the way, has posted all these dodgy photos of me during the game on his Flickr.
* All images originally uploaded by blese.
The ransom note.
1st task: draw a chalk graffiti on the pavement
2nd task: hugging a stranger over 50 in the street
3rd task: spheres and circles
We got stuck on 3...
The people we asked didn't know the right answer, either...
So, we Google'd it...
And still got the wrong answer...
Putting clues together with the other groups...
Fnally, Heliuphant...
Posted by Yasmina at 09:25 PM | Comments (4)
June 27, 2005
construction graffiti
walked to cinematheek to return a couple of DVDs today and passed by this construction site on paradijslaan. i like that construction companies employ graffiti artists to prettify the walls around the construction site.
Posted by Yasmina at 11:23 PM
September 03, 2004
phallic mushroom
Posted by Yasmina at 12:10 AM
September 01, 2004
betamaxxx
Posted by Yasmina at 05:35 PM
June 07, 2004
this little guy ...
... is someone i pass every day on my walk to and from work. he's not placed in an obvious location, but if you look away from the sidewalk once in a while, you'll see him smiling at you. :)
Posted by Yasmina at 06:35 PM
May 15, 2004
eikelstraat
if you speak dutch, you'd understand that the word "eikel" means d*ckhead. and d*ckhead street was where robert and i found ourselves walking on today during our afternoon in maastricht.
Posted by Yasmina at 10:38 PM
