Chinese in Italy…


Well, we’ve sorted out accommodation for the next week…and big surprise here but both the lack of responses from our second poll question, and the great city we’re in, has resulted in our own write-in option of another week in Florence.

Really? Occupy this little historic town?

This time, we’re getting back into the apartment rental thing though.  A week in a hotel was expected to be a bit easier.  Breakfast included in the meal.  Close to the train station.  Easy to book online.  Granted it was easy to make those calls after a week in the hills, but what we have found is a the reality of daily room cleanings and waking up for the included breakfast eliminates any chance of sleeping in.  Breakfast offerings of stale white bread, a few shards of canned pear left swimming in what was likely fruit cocktail, and coffee with less flavour and kick than the dishwater likely used to scrub these cups… it just isn’t what the pictures suggested.  No where did any reviews note the two garbage bins below our single pane glass windows or diligent city sanitation staff emptying those bins at 6AM every morning.  When was the last time the pictures truly fit what was being offered though.

The apartment that we’ve found though does appear to actually be representative.  It’s been a little stressing trying to find a place to land a week at a time, especially when we really have no clue on where we might be going next.  National turmoil over economic uncertainty.  Heads of state resigning. Earthquakes.  Those damn Occupy protests.  Certainly we can’t avoid any issues, but we would like to keep them to a minimum, such as where can we do our laundry and when might the sun be shining.

Blue sky, monuments and churches…I think I see gelato on the left

Florence isn’t bad though, in fact we are thoroughly enjoying this place.  Plenty to see, inexpensive tasty wine, cheap leather goods that make me want to seek out some green leather chaps for some costumed event.  Statues in numerous naked poses that make you wonder if this was art or something kinkier.  Churches, and more churches.  I am expecting yet another museum or some ruins before the day is up.  We might even seek out something other than pizza and pasta for dinner.

Last night was that venture outside of the domestic culinary offerings.  After almost 21 days of pizza and pasta, we happened upon a chinese restaurant amongst the dark and lonely streets of our soon to be new neighbourhood.  We’re talking authentic Chinese, true to the decoration, dishes, and even pink tablecloths.  Music was from some far away land…and best of all, little to no English.  I can honestly say this is the first time I had to struggle with Italian to order Chinese food due to a lack of comprehension on the other end with English.

I don’t mean to expect everyone to just speak English.  It does seem to be a bridging language for many tongues, but for that moment it just seemed to be a unique situation.  Being unilingual almost seems to be and embarrassment now, which should incite some language learning when we get back.  It’s all about the practice though, and having an environment conducive to such learning.  Had we remembered our experience last year…and known we were headed to Italy for a month…even some minor training in conversational italian would have been really handy.

Of course, I still wouldn’t mind picking up a little Cantonese.  Should this be before or after French and Italian though?


One response to “Chinese in Italy…”