Pussycat, Pussycat

Ok, have not been to London recently (and have not viddied any queens), but did go to Florence, Italy for a marvellous 10 days--and only just got caught up enough to start blogging again.

The trip isn't over till you've done the laundry and finished up the journal entries. Therefore, although the plane touched down 9/17, the trip just ended yesterday, when I glued the last wine label in the emphemeral Travelling Art Journal.

It appears that the legend of this trip is going to be the serendipitous finding of a paired wine tasting. We were wandering the streets of old Firenze, looking for a place for lunch, and we came across a menu whose format we recognized--matching wines with courses. For that very night. So we popped in to see if this was an every night thing, as we usually save a blow-out meal for the last dinner in a place, and this was the next-to-last dinner.

Ah, no, tonight only, the chef explained. She would put together a paired menu once every couple of weeks, depending on what was fresh in the markeplaces and what came in from the wineries. So we decided we would eat in the local equivalent of McDonald's (i.e. a cheap, fast, filling meal) in order to have one special dinner.

We discovered that Chianti actually works with certain flavors (like liver) and certain textures (like duck-the oiliness of the bird cuts some of the roughness from the wine). A big surprise to these two non-red drinkers.

Finished a knitted lace tank while on vacation--those 14 hour plane rides are good for something at least. It's bad when you realize you're watching "Herbie -- Reloaded" and it's better than nothing. Hooooo.

Signing off for now to dig through the e-mail morass. I hate to switch to no-mail because I'm afraid of missing something, but then getting caught back up is nightmarish.