Merry Christmas!

What better time to watch Stephen Colbert's Christmas Special?

Snow in Florence

The cold spell that hit cities across Europe last weekend also made it to Florence, where it snows only very rarely. So we were quite excited when the first snowflakes started falling Friday night. Looking out the window, the snow started getting thicker and thicker and kept coming. At around 10:00, we decided to go out to Cascine park, where we took some pictures and built a snowman.
The next day, the snow was still there, since it was still bitter cold for Florentine standards, and we were able to take some rare pictures of the sights covered in a dusting of snow. Of course, the weather also caused transportation chaos, but that's another story...

Fur

I've seen more fur coats in 1.5 years in Florence than in the whole rest of my life.

Barcelona

Last Tuesday was a holiday in Italy, so like all good Italians, we made a long weekend out of it and went to Barcelona for a few days. We really liked the city, with its Gothic old town and modernisme architecture by Antoni Gaudi, among others. Kristen got tickets to a concert in the Palau de la Musica Catalana for her birthday, and we enjoyed listening to Mozart's Requiem in this over-the-top concert hall. Add to that the excellent food (tapas and paella), and you can tell we had a good time.

It was also enjoyable to be in a city (even a southern European one) in which there is ample and functioning public transportation, mostly friendly and helpful people, and you don't feel like you're being ripped off at any given time. Hey Italy... *nudge, nudge* Interestingly, there were very few jaywalkers... what's up with that?

Turkey Day

We celebrated Thanksgiving a few days late again, since making a big dinner on a weekday is too much of a hassle. So Sunday was spent preparing turkey (or rather turkey parts, since a whole bird was too much for just the one meat-eater in the household), gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans, salad, cranberry sauce (out of the can), fruit salad, and pumpkin pie. And we've been eating turkey ever since... If you still have some sitting in the fridge, this turkey spinach curry was pretty good.

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The day before, I went to a concert at the Auditorium Flog, where Yo la tengo were playing. Indie rock bands playing in Florence are few and far between, so even though I wasn't too familiar with their music (there goes my indie cred...), I went and was not disappointed. It was loud, energetic, and incredibly varied -- everything you could ask for from a rock concert. The opening act, Wreckless Eric & Amy Rigby, was pretty good as well.