lingering regret

(taken with nikon f on kodachrome 64)

hi.
yesterday i tried to finish film-scanning of the slide films which had taken in italy last may.
i had tried to do that some time ago, but wasn't able to complete.
then i left and neglected those for a long time.
the idea it's just not right for them to be laid aside like old postcards came to me suddenly yesterday.
and now, who doesn't suppose a today's topic is about italy, again!

after a trip, almost all episodes become pretty.
even though about unwelcome happenings at the time, we come to be able to make a bitter smile for them and welcome anyhow as time goes.
although it's supposed to go like that way, if there's something to be still regretted in my last trip around italy, that is the dinner at a chinese restaurant in florence.
a chinese restaurant in florence, italy!
silence.

ok, let me explain about this, a kind of unwelcome happening.

the first day in florence, my husband and i were still ok though we were terribly tired and under the weather.
but on the second day, after we made a short excursion to pisa (yeah, that pisa which is famous for the leaning tower.) and came back to florence again in the early evening, we didn't have any available energy to do the next activity.
so we spent our rest of the evening on staying at a hotel room and drinking wine with the window open.
then it started to rain.
we were sipping glasses of wine silently with staring tails of cold rain.
our body gradually started to get cold and our minds were caught by misery.
we were completely alienated from italy.

then one good idea (seemingly, at that time) hit us.
"let's go to a chinese restaurant!"



going to a chinese restaurant and spooning hot simple soup with an intimate flavor was believed to be the best idea we could reach.
we were tired, miserable, physically sick and homesick.
though we are not chinese, but our food has similar taste.
and we didn't want to get japanese food in italy because we can easily get that in our home anytime and had known that we usually get disgusted with the quality and the quantity of the content when we eat out for japanese food.
so, chinese food is in kind of between special and ordinal.
it seemed to be a good compromise.

the hot soup which was most wanted was soaked into our cold bodies.
it was more than delicious.
and at the same time, it was other than delicious, too.
though i don't exactly define what "delicious" means, i don't think it's too much to say that it wasn't something admirable.
we ordered two cups of crab soup for each.
but we unfortunately were able to neither find any fragments of genuine crab meat nor taste the flavor of the stock of it.
famous little imitation crab made up for its appearance.
oh, please don't take this the wrong way.
it was satisfying enough because it was mercifully hot, but just not admirable.
and the price tells everything, right?
our soup cost something around 3~4 euros per cup.


things went on kind of the same way all through the dinner.
everything was ok, but far from remarkable.
though it was, having been able to get espresso with a chinese style jello (杏仁豆腐) as a desert was rather impressive. (i'd never expected chinese restaurants are able to serve authentic espresso!)
and the waitress girl, who was seemingly a daughter of a chef or an owner of this family-run restaurant, was favorably diligent and kind.
i was impressed with the girl's linguistic ability; she spoke perfect english for us, though she spoke chinese with her family and served other customers in italian.
oh, other customers!
they were a 2 people party and the only customers other than us, and they were very impressive, too.
they were supposedly a same-gender-and-having-a-big-age-difference male couple.
the atmosphere which surrounded them made us guess they were not a dad and a son, brothers, friends and co-workers but a dating couple.
the young one looked happy after having been offered a small present from the old one, according to the commentary made by my husband, who was sitting facing toward them as i was against.




sun peacefully set underneath the day as if there had been nothing hard or curious.
we walked along the river with the subtly changing sky.

we were supposed to return to the restaurant which we had lunch the day before for our dinner this night.
we had planned that and had been looking forward to do so, then we changed our mind at the last minute.

i don't mean to speak ill of the chinese restaurant at all.
but i just regret that we chose it over the very impressive italian restaurant even though we were in florence, italy.
the chinese restaurant was just not impressive enough to make our stay in florence memorable.
or i could say it's already been memorable somehow.
i just have to wait for the memory of this night to become pretty someday. :)