Remember Life without a cell phone?

I have to say, it's really NICE not having a cell phone. When I walk in someplace, I don't have to worry about it ringing, or be embarassed when it does. The Italians are not on their cell phone as much as one would imagine here... unless it's just because, as I've mentioned before, THERE ARE NO ITALIANS in Florence.

Except, the one or two times I've promised to meet someone. I was to have dinner with Smadar. I was supposed to meet her at her place at 7. We even made alternate plans to meet somewhere at 8. I showed up at her place at 7:15 (which, in Italian time is about right) and she wasn't there. And then I couldn't remember what our alternate plans were. It's much harder to blow someone off, even by accident in this case, with a cell phone.

Anyway, she lives in a really pretty part of town, next to the Piazza della Signoria. So I walked around, saw some really nice restaurants I would be going to with Rik if he wasn't going to be here for just a day. I walked past some small church that had an choral performance by a large group from England. Did I mention that there's some HUGE youth choral festival here? Everywhere and every night around the city there are performances by youth opera, orchestra, and choral groups from all over the world. It sounded really beautiful, the melody of voices and instruments resonating in the diminutive church, even though I am not generally into classical music.

And then I stumbled upon "The Festival of Gelato." How did I not find this Florentine treasure before? Typical.

(By the way, it's Festival DEL gelato, evidently. On an aside, the Italians are the KINGS of prepositions. They have different preposition variations that agree with the noun. It's INSANE. So, the word "of'' is different if you're talking about something feminine singular, feminine plural, masculine singular, you get the point. Oh, and also one for if the word begins with an '' s + consanant."' It's ridiculous. Thank god I am leaving before my lessons were all about the use of the word ''from.''

Perhaps it's because it looks like a cheesy porn shop on 42nd street. The portal is ellipsical, and is lined with a couple of stripes of ugly, loud, neon. Totally out of place. But they had some nice gelato. Today's selection: Green apple with rose. (That's right. Rose. It tasted like a rose.)