Day 62 (SATURDAY!!!)

          On Saturday, my friends Jeanette, Charlotte, and I decided to go to Florence for the day.  We actually did not make this decision this very morning; we had been planning our mini-trip from the beginning of the week.  We had already purchased our bus and train tickets.  We had to take a bus from Cortona to the train station in Camucia.  From there, we would take the train to Florence.  Because we were slightly confused about the bus schedule, we missed our first train to Florence, which delayed our trip by an hour.  However, we eventually made it to Florence.  It felt so good to return to this beautiful and historically rich city.  It felt good to already be so familiar with it and how the city is laid out.  The day was perfect.  Our first stop was the famous Zecchi’s, the art store in Florence where two months ago, I spent a small fortune on art supplies.  Afterwards, I remembered there was an American book store (American meaning that the entire store was in English) a block away from the art store.  We spent a long time perusing through the shelves; it was refreshing to see so many English titles.  I decided to by a used book, because I can never have enough to read in Cortona.  As we were making our purchases, I noticed a flyer that read, “Mama’s Bakery.”  I asked the shopkeepers about it, and they urged us to go visit it.   It was a bakery that was across the river, and they had BAGELS!  We were all thrilled with this news, because we had not seen bagels in FOREVER!  I truly thought they did not exist in Italy.  We planned to eat lunch there later that afternoon.  Before that, however, we visited the San Marco Monastery, which is now a museum.  It was probably the coolest art historical thing I have seen since Michelangelo’s David.  San Marco was a Dominican monastery, and you can explore each of the numerous monks’ cells in the upper story where there is a fresco painted in each one by the artist (and monk member) Fra Angelica, a major Renaissance artist that we are studying in art history.  As you walked in each tiny room, you could see a beautiful fresco depicting some scene Jesus’ life.  During the times of the monastery, the monks would rotate rooms, and would stay in a room containing a fresco that was most appropriate to the circumstances of their life at that point in time.  Walking through the monastery, we realized you could definitely see similarities to the structure of our own monastery that we live in, although we have no frescoes on our walls, and much more spacious rooms.  It was such an interesting visit to see San Marco.  Afterwards, we explored the large markets of Florence, where vendors are selling all sorts of leather goods, from bags and jackets to journals and sandals.  We eventually made our way across the river and following our map, found a very deserted part of town where the bakery was supposed to be.  We were losing hope that we would never find it, when we turned a corner, and there it was!  Despite its remote location in Florence, this bakery far exceeded our expectations.  It was obvious that people knew about this place, because it was bustling with people eating.  In addition to its very cute interior decoration, I was so excited to see that not only did they serve bagels, they had all the essentials of an American coffee shop: muffins, chocolate chip cookies, brownies, cupcakes, and American-style coffee.  I had never realized how much I missed all of this stuff (and I definitely was not thinking of how un-Passover friendly everything was…all chamutz!)  I had a delicious grilled vegetable and melted cheese sandwich on a sesame bagel.  So wonderful.  And I decided a muffin and a chocolate chip cookie to go would not hurt.  The owners (who were American) were so friendly.  I am ninety-nine percent sure they were Jewish because they had a collection of Jewish cookbooks all along the shelves of the bakery (and they looked Jewish).  There was actually one cookbook that I want to look for when I get home.  If anyone wants to do research on it for me, it is called “Secrets of a Jewish Baker” by George Greenstein.  It is a collection of bread recipes and explanations on them from around the world.  I realized I had not even mentioned what challah was to anyone since I had been here, so I gave a detailed explanation to Jeannette and Charlotte about challah and Shabbat in general, mostly because I missed that so much.  After our perfect lunch, we spent the later half of our afternoon shopping and exploring.  Florence was PACKED with people that day.  At some points it was slightly overwhelming with how many people there were.  Before our train ride home, we bought some gelato (of course I got a combination of mixed berry and mango flavors).  The only slightly nerve-wracking part of our day was when on the train ride home, one of the train conductors told us that we never validated our train tickets (we did not realize we had to do that) and the penalty for that is a large fine!  We were nervous as he starting writing out a ticket for us (kind of like a speeding ticket), but then because he probably assumed we were dumb Americans, only fined us five Euros each, as opposed to the monstrous fine.  PHEW!  When we got back to the train station, we caught the last bus back to Cortona and made our way back to the school.  The day was quite an adventure!