Dinner with Friends

My last night in Florence I had dinner with Emma, Alessandro, and Alessandro's girlfriend Maria who had only moved to Florence two weeks before from Moscow.

We went to a small restaurant in the next via over, Marione's, where Alessandro is well known. We sat and he immediately went to work teaching Emma how to pronounce the food, and how to order in the restaurant. He decided what each of us would eat, according to his knowledge of the restaurant and Italian food in general.

We ordered still water and red table wine, which was very good. As a starter we had toast with tomato bruschetta, and toast with chicken liver pate. Yes, I ate it.

Then dinner was served. We shared pasta with clams, and beef stew with mushrooms. It was very good. It was more beef than I've eaten in the past six years combined. The gravy was good with the Florentine bread.

Afterwards we strolled through town, crossing a bridge to Alessandro's favorite piazza. Again, he was very well known there. Emma and I had some nice Sardinian beer with a definite kick, Alessandro and Maria had gelato.

We wasted a lot of good breath trying to convince Emma that a 20-year old male college student is too immature to be dating a 25-year old woman of the world -- unless she wants to hang out at his parent's house and play X-Box. Alessandro pretended to be Emma and send Julio a mushy Whatsapp. We looked around the piazza for a suitable date for Emma -- perhaps even a husband so she can get the Italian equivalent of a Green Card...

Then we strolled back to our respective homes at #11 and #12 via del Sole, and said goodnight / goodbye / ciao ciao.