The Great Gelato Challenge - Post game wrap up

TPP is surprised you could stand the suspense, but here it is, with time running out, with the lay-over in Rome coming to an end, so just before we departed Italy, Mrs. Phactor yanked victory from the freezer of defeat!  The little restaurant in one corner of the terminal had, much to Mrs. Phactor's surprise and delight, exactly 1 new flavor of gelato giving her exactly 30 different flavors of gelato in 30 days!  Now some people might want to put an asterisk because technically, based on labels, she had passion fruit gelato twice (and did TPP ever mention his wife's fondness for passion fruit?), but they most assuredly were different flavors, one sort of eh, and the other a brisk, tart-sweet, zing of passion fruit, more or less what we expect!  This unassuming little shop the Cantina del Gelato is about a block along Via dei Bardi from the Ponte Vecchio, but they have the best artisanal gelato. It however lacks the fancy glass display counters and colorful trays, but the aficionados know quality when they find quality. And with gelato, it is all about taste, not appearance.  Also, remember, tastes and licks just don't count, but a small cup with two flavors was allowed. Here's the gelato flavors rundown: coconut, espresso, lemon, mango, vanilla-bourbon, cherries & cream, hazelnut, peach (quite good), mora (blackberry, but sometimes mulberry is also called mora), caramel, pinenut, dark chocolate, passion fruit eh, mojito (lime mostly, hint of mint), mint chocolate chip, pistachio, white chocolate with bits, raisin, peanut butter (a surprise actually), passion fruit zing!, chianti (a real disappointment considering this was in Tuscany), pear & cheese (more like cheesecake with pear bits), mascarpone, tiramisu, strawberry, watermelon, plum, pineapple, chocolate chip, and egg cream (another surprise). You can figure out the problem right away; common and popular flavors are found repeatedly, and toward the end several gelato places failed to produce a new flavor, and the only person this did not disappoint was a nephew who got vanilla at each and every place, a different sort of survey. Mrs. Phactor played it very cagey selecting what she thought was the most unusual flavors first leaving many common flavors until toward the end, e.g., strawberry, which was bloody good strawberry as it turned out. 

Botanical Geek Tour - Italian edition continues

Our Italian Botanical Geek Tour continues with a changing cast of characters, some not so garden oriented, so the Phactors soldiered on to visit the Giardino Boboli and Giardino Bardini, which are right next to each other, almost.  Both gardens are of the formal nature, and in places both provide panoramic views of Florence, especially Bardini.  Giardino Boboli is the formal gardens behind the Palazzo Pitti.  From the Palazzo entry, the Boboli is all up, and fairly steep; it has a amphitheater and quite a bit of statuary, but botanically it’s pretty dull.  At the top the garden ends sort of surrounding the Belvedere Fortress, and if you walk around the fort, and down just a bit, there is the entrance to the Bardini. It’s also steep and mostly up hill having been an agricultural area just inside the old city walls where the steep terrain probably saved it from development. Some areas are still terraced orchards whose trees are espaliered onto stout fences. A slanted pergola walk is covered by some big old wisterias. Other gardens and lawns have spring flowering shrubs, so a bit quiet in August. The views of the city are quite nice, and it was a clear, not too hot day; no city haze! At the very top is a coffee shop for a bit of rest and fortification. The image is a formal part of the Giardino Bardini, looking up the main stair case. The exercise was needed to make room for gelato (peanut butter and an outstanding passion fruit). Florence as seen from the coffee shop at the top of all those stairs.  

Classic Italian botany

Here’s some historical Italian botany; an illustration by Jacopo Ligozzi on display in the Palazzo Pitti and photographed without flash in keeping with museum policy.  Always impressed by how well this camera does in low light conditions. The interesting thing is that this lovely illustration (ca. 1577-1567) of mandrake (Mandragora autumnalis – Nightshade family) is pretty accurate (flowers aren't quite right) while illustrations of an earlier era portrayed this famous toxic plant  anthropomorphically and very inaccurately. (Does anyone remember Mandrake the Magician comics?) This illustration has held up very well for 400 plus years. Ligozzi was about 20 years earlier than Gerard’s famous herbal, which also had fairly accurate (although sometimes mislabeled) illustrations.  According to legend, and as portrayed in Harry Potter, a mandrake it could scream so loud it could kill you if you pulled it up, even if to repot it.  Here the taproots, often branched, look like roots rather than arms and/or legs. 

Botanical Geek Tour in Florence - Giardino dei Simplici

Chronological order is just so demanding, so let's back up a few days. Veronica (a very botanical name) works here at the villa and as a natural history student she recommended, once she discovered our botanical interests, that TPP visit the Giardino dei Simplici in the center of Florence.

Florence is a lovely old city on the Arno River filled to the brim with Renaissance art and architecture that is presently under an assault by hordes of tourists.  And therein is the conflict because this city lives on income derived from tourism, so like it or not, the crowds are the life blood of this city. Florence is still impressive, but because of the crowds, not very enjoyable at times.  Generally the less well known the attraction, the further its location is from Il Duomo, Brunelleschi’s dome on Santa Maria del Fiore, the church that dominates its region of the city, or  the Ponte Vecchio across the Arno River, the more enjoyable the tourism is.  Thus the intrepid Botanical Geek Tour team (replacing the recently departed Rent-a-Mob (inlaws), located the L’Orto Botanico, Giardino dei Simplici (medicinal garden ca. 1545) part of the natural history museum complex of the Universita degli Studi de Firenze.  However, the garden is much more than just medicinal plants.  While fairly small in size the collections were very impressive, especially a few magnificent specimen trees (e.g., Zelcova serrata, cork oak).  A large portion of the tropical specimens are pot grown and moved into old fashioned, but very effective quarters for the winter.  Plants were well labeled and organized loosely into taxonomic groups, so sure enough Pilularia, Marsilea, and Regnellidium were right there next to each other. BGT gives this little garden four thumbs up for plant geeks. The garden is located a short walk from the Piazza San Marco, and you can definitely escape the crowds just a few blocks away.  What could they be thinking?  What’s more interesting than a botanical garden? This image is looking up into the huge crown of the cork oak, Quercus suber.

Giardino di Villa Camberaia - Botanical Geek Tour adventures in Tuscany

Some guide book somewhere mentioned that the garden of the Villa Camberaia perched high in the hills above Florence as a great destination for garden lovers.  Well, you know the botanical geek tour squad will try their best to get the straight dope for our faithful readers. Without any particular agenda today, the villa's location was easily found on Via del Rosselino outside of the little town of Settignano. What better than a little botanical adventure a bit off the beaten tourist track. Coming from the south rather than from Florence our brilliant naviguessing found the Via del Rosselino without any problems, except for one; our approach was from the "back" end of the "street". Our Fiat rental car was just much too wide for the high walled, tight-turned "road" (translation - four foot wide goat path).  At one point, with the rear-view mirrors folded inward, there was an whole 7-8 cm on one side and maybe 1.5 cm clearance on the other side. It was amazing! TPP thought we'd have to return the keys to the car rental people and tell them, "Your car is wedged between two rock walls up in Settignano", where upon TPP figured a prohibition about driving in such places was in the fine print of the rental agreement somewhere. Then it occurred to a passenger that no one was getting out of a car so wedged anyways. So the only recourse was to forge onward at a blazing speed of 2 km/hr or so and hope for the best.  These are the kind of roads where you use your car horn to announce your presence because if two vehicles met, one was going to have to back up until you found some place to get out of the way. Why do they make Fiats so big and wide? One corner was so tight it took 5 forward and back maneuvers to make the turn, and the many-colored paint splotched rock by the driver's door was a testament to the number of drivers who failed this test. Here's an image of the final approach to the villa just so you can begin to visualize this road. This is not a driveway, but the main road through this entire "subdivision"!  Beep! Beep! What a place for a botanist from the flat lands! BTW, apparently most visitors walk up from the town having ridden the bus that far. So is it worth it to try to find and visit this garden? The BGT team cannot say; the garden was closed until August 16th! And of course today was the 15th! Can you believe it? The team drove home and made pizza.