Sunday 12 July 2009

After Rome - Florence Part II and weekend in Padova


Back to Florence, to Chinese food, this is the sign of the restaurant across from where we ate.  How appropriate. . .


We then went to Padova, the NEXT day (really?) to join Gabe's mum Laura, John and Dee for the opening of an exhibition by Frederico Uribe. . . I was excited about the ROAD TRIP in the G wagon . . loooove road trips and the Tuscan countryside is not so shabby . ..


weekends at Laura's are always amazing, you can really breath in Bastia . . . I remember the first weekend 4 years ago with the famous cake fight.  This weekend, we all needed, Dee Poon came to see us straight from Cannes so just needed the breather - Dee is awesome - very smart and beautiful, John from Paris was barely recovered from Florence the week before came back (John is Gabe's Communication director and an extraordinary guy - we love John - he is like my brother) and Davide of Pharmacy from Milan.  


John Lin

Dee Poon - reminiscing her Pop Up shop in HK . . .Harvey Nics is not enough! :)
 
Bastia di Rovolon

Gabe and Laura

A Corian ring in the Alice in Wonderland garden of Laura's friends

Panda brooches

Dee and I

John and Dee

Gabe and friends

Gabe

Sunset over the valley

The weekend was about sitting by the pool, eating too much and doing very very little.  Then back to good old Florence we went, where I proceeded to spend the week, stuck to Gabe's side in that place in the factory. 

Gabe with a bag from the travel collection

I hoarded leather strips, the leftovers, they will be made into little dresses a la Chomwan.  We had lots of fun - I liked the factory a lot, can't say the same about the Chinese dumplings from the only Chinese restaurant in Scandici though - much preferred the "Gucci canteen" in Rinaldi. 

There was oddly a little Thai/Asian supermarket near Gabe's so I cooked Thai food one night and all the Florentines came over to dine on the rooftop, they were such characters, from Maddy to Peter Marongoni, an institution, definitely eccentric and Julian Solms, the art dealer who is so fantastic, the ultimate dandy - I adore Julian.
 
Street party Florence style

The other thing I loved about Florence was of course, Santa Maria Novella, yes, fell in looove with it though now that you can get SMN in NY and now also in BKK in not one but two places well, if the carte d'armenie didn't smell so good I would switch to something more scarce and well, less AVAILABLE! The whole point is to go to get SMN in Florence .. .oh well, the times we live in.

Oh and let's not forget the food again, the BEST restaurant in Florence, really, truly . . . is this tiny trattoria . .. Gabe needs to remind me of the name . . .

The Trattoria

The chef in motion

Bistecca Fiorentina

Corto New Look

The artichoke omelette was something made in heaven and the butter chicken was to die for . . .not good for the hips and it did something funny as I recall a very funny night (bear hugs and laughing till I cried) and the desire not to eat for 2 more days . . .except porchetta sandwich in Scandicci the next day . . .that was about all I could stomach on my last day in Florence. . .   So we finally said good bye to Florence at the end of my second week, Gabe and I would finally go back to Paris, so I could fly to Venice, pretty retarded I think but that's the way European flights can be! Train to Pisa and had loads of time to kill . . . loads . . . 


Corto bag with Pharmacy T-shirt

Boyy Drake bag with all my STUFF

(I should add that apart from Corto, I also love Boyy bags, especially this one which I travel with,Drake has been a good buddy and even went to Bali with me, he's a tough bag, even the pink Space Invader has already lost a leg)

With all that time we spent quite a bit of it just hanging . . .it funny . . . my forth Italian city in 2 weeks 

Gabe (handsome pic)

Me 

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