Thursday, August 16, 2012
♥ The story of Florence gelato and me
The top 5 things to do in Florence are:
1. Eat ice cream everyday
2. Buy leather goods
3. Eat florentine steak
4. Go shopping
5. Go to piazza Michelangelo to see the sunset
Being the devoted traveller I am, how can I leave Florence without doing all of the above things? I window shopped while lugging my luggage all the way from the train station to the hostel. I ate my first rare steak in my life, because eating florentine steak any more cooked than rare is just a waste. I bargained for the first time in my life for a leather pouch (I really don't like bargaining. Or any related forms of disagreements) I walked half an hour and climbed a hill at the end of a super tiring day to see the sunset (oh it was worth it though!!) BUT. BUUUUUT. All these are nothing. NOTHING. Compared to the devotion I gave to to do number 1. I love gelato with my life. But at the end off this tragic story I'll have to re-evaluate my love for ice cream. For the time being that is.
You might wonder "how can any story involving ice cream be remotely related to the word 'tragic'??" Oh trust me I thought so too. Ice cream can only mean heaven, bliss and 'oh goodness I want mooooooore'. So when I landed in the land of gelato disguised as the city of Florence, I was ready to execute to do list number 1 to its very last letter. I have only 2 days in Florence and there are over 50 flavours of gelato! What to do?? The only solution was: (obviously) eat ice cream everyday! And not JUST everyday. I had 5 scoops on the first day. And then I had 3 scoops on the second before lunch. After lunch ended (at 3.30......) we were shopping/walking back to our hostel when we decided to have our last bite of gelato before we leave Florence for Rome. So we looked through at least 5 ice cream parlours (yeah they had at least 10 along one street) before we decided to buy at this shop that was the cheapest. Since I was still quite full from my steak and pizza lunch, I asked for just 2 scoops: this lusciously dark dark chocolate and golden mango.
Innocent enough right? I mean, ignoring the 3 scoops in the morning and the half-kilo steak..... and a carpet-sized pizza................
But the steak and pizza was shared amongst 3!
Ok back to the story. I ordered my 2 scoops of ice cream. And then the woman was excitedly scooping and scooping and scooping HUGE blobs of ice cream into my cone. It wasn't scoops, it was BLOBS. She wasn't even using the normal ice cream scooper, she was using something like a miniature spade. For my second scoop of mango she just dug out a huge slab and started dropping it onto my chocolate gelato sitting on top of my cone. From midair. Because it was just too much to properly position it onto the already overflowing chocolate scoop. So When she was finally done she had in her hands an ice cream cone the size of the leaning tower of Pisa. And that was still not the end! She started sticking those round wafer biscuits the size of my palm onto the ice cream. So when the massive sculpture finally landed in my hands it looked something like the leaning tower of Mickey mouse.
And then I stumbled over to the cashier to pay. My friend also got a similar mass and she paid first. While I was still marveling at the massiveness of my ice cream she came and gave me a 晴天霹雳.... And told me that the cone costs 8.70€!!!! EIGHT EUROS AND SEVENTY CENTS. THAT'S LIKE THIRTEEN SGD?!?! FOR AN ICE CREAM?
My world spun.
We walked out of the shop in a daze, with a dripping monster in our hands and 9 euros lighter in our pockets. And we created quite a commotion on the streets. A man grabbed his wife and warned her to "be careful". Another woman came up to ask how much did our ice cream cost. We could hardly walk straight, because it took up all our concentration to prevent the ice cream from dripping everywhere. I wasn't kidding when I said it's leaning. (My mango actually toppled over later.... But i managed to save it at the expense of my third piece of tissue) The saddest part was.... The chocolate ice cream, forming the base of my structure, drips as if its never known what being solid means. It doesn't help either with a 36 deg temperature and an unforgiving sun. By the time we reached our hostel i'm not even done with half of my ice cream and I have chocolate all over my hands, my mouth and my hat. We were just supposed to grab our luggage and leave for the train station, but we were so 狼狈 we had to hide in the laundry room to try and finish our ice cream before we could resurface onto the streets. And at 4.30 the manager of the hostel came to say that they're closing And we have to leave because we have no keys and will be locked in. But one look at my chocolate fountain and our ice cream bloated faces he relented and said we can stay in the laundry room till we finish our ice cream.
So we sat and ate and slurped and sighed and moaned.... The cone never seemed to decrease in size. It took me another 20 minutes and all my determination to finish the last bite. And by that time I could hardly stand. And after that we floated in a world of ice cream to the train station. I don't even know how we managed to get the train in time.
Now I'm on the train to Rome, while leaving Florence further and further behind me, I recount this sad and tragic tale of how an innocent order of Firenze gelato brought my ice cream journey to a screeching halt.
I'll wait till tomorrow before I consider whether to start my engines again
Ciao!
3:57:00 AM
