Where are we going?

Addy, Lara, Sheila and I had plans to go to Lucca Friday morning. We finalized the plan to meet at the train station the next morning during dinner at Lara’s Thursday night. Lara’s dinner was outstanding. The meal started with sautéed eggplant, wrapped in prosciutto, and sautéed again. Next, she created a beautiful ragú, made from a sofritto, beef, and pureed tomatoes. A sofritto is the beginning of many sauces here in Italy. It is simply sautéed onions and carrots in olive oil (with or without butter). It cuts the acidity in the tomatoes and has a subtle sweetness that is amazing. I brought the desserts, of course. I stopped by Gilli, a shop on the Piazza della Republica that I have been dying to try. I got 7 different offerings for the four of us. We ate them all, along with 3 bottles of wine.

Needless to say, 10AM turned into noon. We bought our tickets and boarded the train for the 1 ½ hour trip to Lucca. It is on the west coast of Tuscany and it supposed to be really beautiful with amazing cured meats, which was driving my desire to go. I brought panini (sandwiches) for everyone from I Frattelli (The Brothers), the BEST sandwich shop in all of Florence and right next door to my apartment. I get a panino from there every day for breakfast. I can’t help it. The bread is amazing. I think the prosciutto, goat cheese and arugula is my favorite, but the sundried tomato with pecorino and basil is also fantastic. One morning I got the fresh sausage and eggplant and was surprised to find that fresh means raw. I have never had raw sausage. Carpaccio? Yes. Steak tartare? Yes. Raw sausage? Not until this week. It was surprising good, if a little strange. I still have not been able to try the trippai or lampredotto. According to dictionary.com tripe is the first and second divisions of the stomach of a ruminant, especially oxen, sheep, or goat. They actually put at the end “used as food”. Lampredotto is the forth stomach. And by forth, I mean intestines.

Back on the train, we are munching away on our sandwiches and the ticket guy comes to check our tickets. He looks at Addy who was the first to hand over her ticket and says, “Where are you going?” Well, a more appropriate question could not be asked of these four women. None of us really know where we are going yet. That’s why we are all in Florence. Addy looks up at him sheepishly and says “Lucca?” I’m sure you know the end to this story. We were on the wrong train, going east, not west. We gave the ticket guy our best smiles as the entire car is laughing and asked, “Where ARE we going?” Arrezzo. OK, so we are going to Arrezzo. Thank god, Sheila brought her guide book. We exited the train and hiked to the historical center.

Of course, it turned out to be a wonderful day. Arrezzo isn’t a tourist destination so it was pretty authentic. We actually saw a barrel shaped 80 year old woman on a scooter, with a helmet. She was simply adorable. With no itinerary, we wandered around, saw some frescoes, went to the park and the town duomo. We also found a French market, which had the best croissants I’ve ever had. It was like I was eating a flakey stick of butter, in the best possible way. For apertivo, we went to an enoteca and had a bottle of wine outside. We used our new wine tasting skills and got some interesting results. I said moldy, Addy thought “exhaust” and Lara decided that our wine had secondary aromas of “burnt poop”, a very inauspicious beginning. But it opened up and we now know none of us really like Sauvignon Bianco Trentino DOC 2006.

Spices at the French market

I love this type of stone work. It's rocks from the site fit together to make a wall.
A couple of architectural moments that I enjoyed.

Dinner at a local osteria included wild boar in red sauce with homemade pasta, grilled vegetables and chianti at 4 euro a bottle. It was homey Italian food. I’ll give it the good and cheap rating. We caught the last train back at 9:45 and read our chick lit the whole way.