She’s writing about food again.

The chief reason I spend so much time writing about my gastronomic adventures is that I want everyone to understand when I arrive back in Utah weighing 50 extra pounds. I should perhaps mention here that the correct reaction will be based on Tom in BJD, viz “Bridget! You’re looking thin.” (Is it bad that I use BJD in the same “everyone surely knows what that means” way as, say, “KJV”?).

Some very special foodie experiences:

Hemingways: It’s a chocolatier’s – big pictures of Hemingway on the walls (not sure what the connection is), and books about chocolate in cabinets (which is actually kind of annoying – I want to be able to READ the books about chocolate. Possibly lick the pictures. I had some beautiful little cioccolata torta thing with chocolate in many forms–white, dark, mousse, ganache, praline. The kind where you savour every mouthful and slow down when you approach the end because you can’t bear to see it disappear forever.

Vestri – also a chocolatiers, the kind with foodie magazine articles about itself posted on the walls– I had the cioccolata freddo. You’d think it would be like chocolate milk (like when TLC ordered an iced steamer and the waitress rather snottily said “so you want a glass of milk?”), but it’s not. It’s richer and more chocolatey, and mmm….

Vivoli: Some say the best gelato in Florence. I can’t say I’ve tried EVERY other place to compare, but it was definitely way up there. I had mine on a warm day after visiting Santa Croce. Cioccolata ricci (are we spotting the theme?), pere caramellata, and fragola. I ate it leaning on a stone pillar looking at the basilica, enjoying the sunshine, and giving directions to the Accademia to an American lady and her daughter. I really hope they made it there – they didn’t have a map and kept calling the Duomo the “Dromer” so I’m a little worried for them.

Caffe Loggia dell’Albizi: It suddenly started raining heavily on the way home from the supermarket, so I ducked into this caffe that I’ve wanted to visit for a while. I ordered a cioccolata, and a chocolate croissant. The hot chocolate is that gorgeous thick kind, and comes unsweetened, so you get to dissolve your little packets of sugar in it and taste the flavour coming alive as you do. The croissant was even better than expected. The chocolate was melted on the inside, so I ended up getting it messily and deliciously over my fingers, and got to lick them off because I’m in Florence and it's not like my mum’s watching.