N crossed some things off of his to do list...

There are many things that over the last 5 weeks here I had said to myself "oh i should do that sometime." Today, with only three days left before we make our way to venice, I decided its time to start knocking things off my to-do list.

First: caffee correto. This is a traditional italian beverage, which is basically just a a cup of espresso, spiked ("corrected" hence correto) with a shot of grappa, a hard (very hard) grape base liquor. I'd seen many people ordering this (even as early as 10AM), and had decided that, as gross as this sounds, i must eventually try it. Today I did! It was very strange, and also quite good. I really cant believe ppl here drink something so stiff before even lunch time. Especially considering lunch often involves beer or wine, is followed by negronis, and finally by wine with dinner and followed by dessert wine. The tolerance of ppl here must be pretty amazing that they are not constantly drunk. Anyways, the corretto was a good way to cap the pre-dinner walk, and is something I may experiment with when we return to the US.

Second: Trippa al Fiorentina. That's italian for tripe. A very popular florentine dish, tripe is the name given to the first three chambers of the cow's stomach (recall cow's have four stomaches). I finally worked up to this, having a cold trippa salad as my first course at dinner tonight: tripe served in olive oil, garlic, parsely, carrots, and celery. The american couple sitting next to us also ordered this not knowing what it was, and while they were quite put off by it, I thought it was very good! Ok it was a little wierd to be able to see all the layers of stomach muscle, lining, and all, but it was in fact very tasty. Tomorrow I will tackle the third to-do task, which is to eat the fourth and final chamber of cow stomach, called lampredotto. R will no doubt be on hand to document with pictures.