Our Italian Furry Friends

Anyone who knows us, knows how much we love animals. Well, our love affair continued in Italy with a few very special friends.

When we were in Tuscany, we found our way to the Castello Gabbiano, where our friend Robert Norman (more on him in another post) was going to be shooting a wedding. It was gorgeous (shocking, I know) and we were there at the perfect time of day.



As we looked around the place we met two dogs that we instantly fell in love with. One was super friendly and wanted to be our friend instantly. He had an injured back leg but that did not stop him from from bounding ahead and showing us the way. We named him Guisseppe.


His brother, who looked just like him, was much more introverted and extremely mistrustful of us. He didn't want to come anywhere near us, but barked up a storm because we were clearly SO dangerous. You could see it in his eyes - he was scared and slunk away from us every time we came near him. We named him Alfredo. He would not even let us take his picture. But we loved him in spite of all that.

Just because it wouldn't seem like a complete blog post if I didn't talk about food, I have to say that I had one of the best, if not THE BEST dish of my life at the ristorante at the Gabbiano Castle. It was an appetizer. Arugula, proscuitto, and some sort of pan-seared pecorino romano cheese.


I cannot even DESCRIBE how good it was. I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised, it was, after all, fried cheese. But not the dirty, plastic fried cheese of your average American chain food restaurant (which is wonderful in its own way, make no mistake). This was a clean, and complex fried cheese with layers and layers of subtlety. It was so good, it made me close my eyes. It was SO good that it caused us to coin a new phrase. Now, i am pretty expressive with my hands, as many of you may know. Apparently, when I tasted this dish, Geoff said that it made me "hang up the phone". I closed my eyes, and, with my hand mimicking a phone (with thumb & pinkie extended), i brought my hand up to the inside of my shoulder...making it look like I was hanging up the phone.

This picture illustrates, even though it was taken at another EXCELLENT meal in Cortona several days later.


Our other favorite friend was a cat that we named Luigi. I don't really even much care for cats in general but Luigi won me over. We came upon him in the tiny town of Monteione, which we stumbled into after striking out on spending a day by a pool (as the pool was "closed for the season" - since it was summer we didn't really understand that). We walked through Monteione and came upon Luigi, sitting in the middle of this tiny almost-piazza all by himself. He was slow and sleepy and Geoff decided he had a deep gravelly voice and a thick Italian accent (of course). We also discovered that Luigi loved to have his picture taken....