Field trip season

It's class field trip time in Florence, apparently. There are large groups of middle or high school-age kids everywhere.

Comrade Cat

New Music Recommendations, part 4

• Shilpa Ray and Her Happy Hookers: "Coward Cracked The Dawn"
  This track blew me away when I first heard it. Shilpa has been compared in various corners of the blogosphere to Janis Joplin, and the blues rock she does is pretty awesome. The fact that she plays a harmonium as accompaniment is an added exotic bonus. Unfortunately, she hasn't released any albums yet, so the only music available to listen to is on her myspace page or various other sites on the internet.
• Lisa Hannigan: "Lille"
  While I liked her performance on the Colbert Report recently of "I Don't Know," I actually like this acoustic song better, though I've only listened to both a couple of times.
• Buddy Holly: "Crying. Waiting. Hoping"
  All Songs Considered played this track on the anniversary of the Day the Music Died a little over a month ago, which lead me to explore his music a bit more.
• Fleet Foxes: "It Ain't Me Babe"
  Cool cover of a Bob Dylan song by a great group (Both the self-titled album and the Sun Giant EP are excellent, by the way).
  

I'm still hoping to get the new Neko Case and Decemberists albums for my birthday, so I can't report on those yet, however the tracks that have been flying around the internet promise good things.

The food in Lucca

Reading this article in the New York Times today, I was struck again by the stupidity of the law banning new "ethnic" restaurants in the city center of Lucca. It's really not like there's a shortage of Italian restaurants in that city, and I would hazard a guess that the vast majority of tourists visiting will go to an Italian restaurant. Also the vast majority of Italians, as their taste in food can be quite conservative. As I've written about before, I think Italian restaurants could stand to be a little more innovative, and surely one of the most important impetuses for innovation in food comes from foreign cuisine. This ban smells to me more of xenophobia than true interest in the best for the city.

Arezzo

The weather forecast predicted a sunny, warm early spring day, so instead of going to see some museum in Florence, we decided to hop on a train to Arezzo, one hour away, today. Though not usually as high on visitor's places to see as Pisa, Lucca, or Siena, it is a pretty city with plenty of art, and was where much of "La vita e' bella" ("Life is Beautiful") was filmed.
The first stop on our itinerary was the House of Vasari, where the famous architect designed and decorated his own house. Kristen got in for free here, since it was the "Festa della Donna" today. From here, we first stopped off at an art museum to try to reserve tickets for a church we wanted to see later in the day. Though the woman there couldn't reserve the tickets there (our guidebook was wrong), she was very friendly and called the reservation number for us. Next was the church of San Domenico, where we looked at the Crucifixion by Cimabue from afar, since mass was taking place. The same happened in the Duomo, though it had already progressed to Communion, so after a brief walk through the park and finding the Medici fortress closed for renovations, we returned and were able to look at the stained glass windows, stone tombs, and fresco of Marie Magdalene by Piero della Francesca. A short walk further was the Piazza Grande, which was unfortunately being repaved. Maybe we'll come back sometime for the Joust of the Saracen.
After a quick lunch, we then walked to the church of San Francesco, where we picked up our prereserved tickets and then went in to see the fresco cycle "The Legend of the True Cross" by Piero della Francesca. It's rightly famous (and was seen in "The English Patient"), and I was thrilled by the effects of light, as well as the chaotic battle scenes. Finally, we headed back to the train station, stopping at the ruins of a Roman amphitheatre on the way before catching the train back to Florence.

Italian Abbreviation

In Italian, you can use "x" to mean "per," like we would say "times" for the multiplication sign. So in Italy, the movie Superbad is called Suxbad.

Pigeons

At least they call it what it is.


("Piccione" means "pigeon" in Italian, and in English it's called "squab".)