Mercato | gmarkvoort

Florence Food Tour

As many of you know, Italy and Tuscany in particular is known for its love of food and great cuisine. This is very evident in its food markets and shops, big and small, which display local seasonal food to its plethora of eateries, whether they are called trattoria, osteria, ristorante, birreria, spaghetteria, pizzeria, tavola calda, rosticcerria, café, taverna—-seriously a bewildering series of names —not sure what the difference is.. what is consistent, is a love of good food.

So with this awareness of Tuscany, I had decided to seek out a cooking class. The website offered a lot of choices…eventually I landed on a tour offered by Walkabout Tours Florence https://www.walkaboutflorence.com/ . The tour offered a food tour through old Florence followed by a cooking lesion at a nearby Tuscan Farm House.

What a treat this turned out to be!!!! At 10 am on a Friday morning, 15 people met at the appointed meeting place. We met Elisa, our food and tour guide. My group consisted of visitors from Perth and Sydney Australia, Hong Kong, several cities across the USA (Denver, New Jersey, Virginia, South Carolina to name just a few), ranging in age from 20 to 60+. The group was friendly and eager for a great experience and Elisa was determined to give it to us.

Having collected we were off, following Elisa to discover Florence’s historical food market, visit the local baker, butchers and market stalls. Knowledgeable, Elisa shared with us a great deal of Florentine ‘food history’ , all while conversing with the local sellers as we purchased the ingredients that we would later need in our cooking class. On the journey Elisa and Frank ( one of my fellow travelers) loaded up food bags with local tomatoes, olives, mozzarella, pork loin, ground meat.

On the way, we learned that Florence was an important city in the wool trade in the middle ages given its location on the Arno River. Florentine merchants develop the first coin the Florin and the first bills of exchange –this enabled the merchants to pay debts without transporting cash and of course extend credit—hence the establishment of a robust banking system in Florence.

We learned that salt, used to preserve food in the days prior to refrigeration was also a ‘golden’ commodity and extremely expensive. The bread of Florence is not salted—yes it is quickly one of the things you notice, although I did not immediately twig onto that it tasted different because there is no salt in it. There are two stories as to why. The first is that salt was so heavily taxed, the people of Florence couldn’t afford to add it to their food and started to make unsalted bread and continue to do so to this day. The second story is that in the 12^th century, Florence and Pisa were rival cities. The Pisan army blocked shipments of salt reaching Florence to force a surrender to Pisa. Florentines simply eliminated salt from their cooking and did not surrender. According to Elisa, a rivalry still exists today between the Florentines and Pisans.

We were introduced to the methods of selling wine in early Florence. The picture here is of Elisa telling us the history of the ‘wine tabernacle’. This small opening that you see ( most today are closed off, as the one in the picture) was just the right size for a bottle of wine to fit through. Locals would come to these small wine tabernacles- holes in the wall, and purchase their wine directly from the seller. A curious wine vending approach only found in Florence—they are called ‘tabernacle’ because they have a similar appearance to religious tabernacles also found on many a street corner. Deb a fellow traveller rather wished she could still purchase a bottle today.

A final stop was to a typical Florence coffee shop for our morning coffee. We were instructed in the varying forms of Italian Coffee, espresso, caffe normale, cappuccino, machiatto, caffe correto and so on( a latte, by the way in Italy is hot milk and has no coffee). There seems sot be a coffee drink in Italy for every time of day, need and mood. A caffe correto is drunk the morning after. It has a shot of liquor to set you to rights again..although another explanation was also given— that the Italians get up at the crack of dawn, labour in the fields and by mid morning need a shot of something in their coffee. Whatever it all seems to work. We also were advised there is no sitting with your morning coffe…the north American tradition sitting at the starbucks with your coffee and paper of computer, is NOT the way to drink coffee in Florence. And indeed I have yet to find anything resembling a starbucks type establishment.

Coffee is drunk standing up at a narrow counter, you drink it ( and as you know an espresso does not take long to consume) and you go! Coffee drinking Italian style!!

Armed with our purchases, coffee to sustain us we departed via mini bus to our Tuscan farm house.

My next blog will take you through our cooking experience.

Florence Streets

As Florence was established in medieval times, many of its streets are quite narrow. With our north American sensibilities we would think it unsafe to have two way traffic, bicycles, vespas and pedestrian traffic all making their way down what we would term mere alleyways. Nevertheless it seems to work. Mind you one can’t possibly get any real speed up on these twisty streets so not even the cars go too fast. Interestingly, while gardens do exist in central Florence they tend to be situated in inner courtyards or surrounded by large walls. Consequently the houses and garden walls come right to the edge of these narrow streets. Many of the streets are therefore designated one way…good thing in my estimation and much of Florence is designated as pedestrian zone.

The inner city is therefore not designed for modern day vehicular traffic. I have found that the inner tourist area—which is most of old Florence is a ZTL –Zona a Traffico Limitato …a Limited Traffic Zone so a restricted traffic area, apparently controlled by a network of video cameras. To drive in this area you need a special permit ( not available with a rental car) and if you do apparently a massive fine will eventually find you. While I will be renting a car for part of my stay in Tuscany, there is no way I will get anyway near the centre of the city.

Very glad I was that i was here early enough to suss this all out and to recognize how complicated it will be to drive in Florence at all. Oh yes I may not have mentioned that these small streets also do not run in nice straight lines or form any kind of grid that could help you figure out where you are or where you are going. In fact you will find that most of the streets change names quite regularly as well.. you think you are still on Via Giuseppe Verdi and you look up at a cross road and find out you are on Via dei Benci.. all part of the charm of the Florence experience. To experience Florence comfortably, you cannot have a high need for control or knowing exactly where you are at any given point…. If you did, this would be a frustrating city.. I did seem to find however, that when I amble down many of the streets in the centre, most eventually lead me to the Duomo. I guess getting to church was important in medieval times.

In my first few days I wondered what it would be like to find one’s way at night through these narrow streets and as a woman on my own in Florence I considered how safe it would be to venture out of an evening. Well I did not have long before I was compelled to experience Florence at night. When I arrive, I

like to check out blogs of others on Florence. They are great sources of what to see and do and often more interesting to read than the commercial tourist sites. http://girlinflorence.com is a great site that I found really informative, as well as an English monthly news magazine called The Florentine that my hosts had left in the apartment for me. I picked up a more recent version at the tourist bureau later in the week and you can also access it online at www.theflorentine.net

Mercati in Musica: “un Orchestra di Chitarre”

In any event, trolling events I found that in the month of September the Markets in Florence were hosting a series of musical concerts in the evenings. The last of these was to be held at 9:15pm on Saturday after my arrival. This sounded way interesting, so with some trepidation I set out to see what it would be like to navigate those small alleyways at night on my own. Just to be safe,I let my daughter know what I was doing and where I was going. What she could do about it back in Canada who knows, but I thought, if I never show up again the police would have some place to start in their investigation. (I am currently reading Elisabeth George, hence the leap to how to leave clues for police detectives ).

In any event I soon found out traveling the alleyways at night was no issue…they all are incredibly well lit and generally full of people out and about experience Florence. A breeze as it were…although wherever you go, it is always good to pay attention to what is going on around you..having been pickpocketed once in London UK, I did not want to have a second experience.

So off to the Mercato della Loggia del Porcellino to experience “un Orchestra di Chitarre” –“ A Orchestra of Guitars” in memory of Franco Mealli.

When I arrived I found a large group of guitarists sitting on the steps of the market playing guitar.. turns out I had arrived while they were still setting up and simply practicing. Shortly chairs came out, set up in the Mercato, I scooped a seat in the second row and experienced an amazing concert of guitarists accompanied by a violin, an oboe and clarinet. Amazing and magical. I attempted to make a short video, but until i upgrade my blog,it seems i can’t upload it yet… I will try to do so in the next few days so that through it you will get a sense of the evening.