Friday February 13, 2009

Tonight our landlord’s son came over to fix our heater. It wasn’t completely broken but very spastic. He lived in San Francisco with his mom (our landlord) for 7 years so his English was very good. He told us a lot about the culture of Florence and gave us suggestions of restaurants/bars around the area and other places outside of Florence we should visit. He reminded us that Florence isn’t the “real” Italy because of the huge numbers of international students and tourists.

Since we were leaving for the weekend, our pantry and fridge was pretty bare so we decided to head out for dinner to an Asian fusion restaurant very close to us…not that we’re sick of Italian food already but rather wanted to see what Asian food was like in another country. Since we’ve been here we still haven’t eaten at a “restaurant” where you sit down and order from a server because it’s a pretty pricey and time consuming experience. For whatever reason this concept slipped our minds before decided to eat there; so as we sat down in the restaurant a slight panic came over us. A traditional meal at a restaurant consists of an antipasto (appetizer), first course (usually pasta or risotto), second course (a meat or fish), and dessert. Obviously if we decided to go that route the Euros would add up very quickly so instead we opted for one antipasto and first course each, hoping this was semi-acceptable. We have some research to do on Italian restaurant etiquette. Our meals were delicious…I had seafood dumplings served in broth for my antipasto and a very good Thai noodle dish as my first course. By the end of the first course we were craving the second course but our wallets appreciated that we didn’t order one.
After dinner we headed home to pack for our Venice weekend trip!