Italia

Wanna know the best way to get half-way decent airplane food? Fly to Italy. Seriously. I guess Delta knows that they can’t fool Italians into thinking that cardboard crap tastes good, and while airplane food is, well, airplane food, it really is better quality when you’re headed to Italy—Pisa, actually. 

If this is not enough to persuade you to try hopping on a flight to the boot in the Mediterranean, I understand. But it sure does make it easier to tolerate ten hours spent in a cylindrical aluminum tube speeding 400 mph six miles above the ground.

First of all, I must tell you that Italians require that their entire existence harbors elements of beauty and grace. Just listen to a native speak his language—it’s pure poetry even if all he’s doing is buying a train ticket to Firenze. Another example is the Pisa airport. Tons of flowers adorn the sidewalk at the main entrance—it makes you want to actually hang out for a while. Of course, Italy is simply gorgeous. Beautiful light (even Obama thinks so, in case you care), beautiful vineyards and olive groves, beautiful mountains, beautiful sea. Everything rocks here!

Since blog posts aren’t supposed to be lengthy, I’ll just leave with a preview of what I intend to blog about for a while. 

Our gracious friends, Rick Hensley and Donna Polseno, who are ceramicists who teach every summer at a lovely internationally-acclaimed ceramics school outside of Certaldo, Tuscany, and who allowed us to experience Italy in a way that would have been impossible otherwise. I’m going to write about Carlo, who’s family land claim dates back some 500 years, and who tried teaching me a bit of Italian, who had me pick plums from his orchard to give to Bruna (I’ll tell you about her, too), and who made me the most delectable frittata imaginable. Then there’s the cinghiale, the bane of many farmers’ existence, including Carlo’s, and which tastes delicious if it’s been stewed in wine for a long-ass time. The Cinque Terre and the Mediterranean, as well as Tuscany—Pisa, Firenze, Lucca, Sienna—all have provided us with amazing experiences. But what I really want to write about it the meal I had at Bruno and Bruna’s inn, which is situated in Santa Maria—the one in the Ligurian countryside. Stay tuned!

Ciao!