Armed with our GPS, a set of coordinates, 10 euros, and a couple of spoons, we headed to Florence over the weekend. The treasure hunt was sponsored by our friends Perri and Jim, who gave us a card with the coordinates, money, and spoons as a departure gift when we left Seattle. I had deduced that we were on a mission sacred to Italians and many who visit Italy: the perfect gelati. 
Simply put, gelato is Italian ice cream, but technically it's not ice cream, at least not by U.S. government standards, which require a 10% minimum of milk fat to carry the name. With roughly 7% milk fat and no eggs, gelato is the lighter cousin of American ice cream, which I think makes sense, because Italians do not seem to like overly sweet desserts. However, the reduced fat in gelato doesn't mean it's not creamy. The best gelato are like silk on your tongue, often punctuated with little bursts of fruit, chocolate, or nut flavor. The purist might chose the smooth fior di latte (flower of milk), but the more adventurous might try the chunky stracciatella (fior di latte with chocolate bits) or bacio (a hazelnut chocolate combination and also the Italian word for "kiss"). But you never see Italians eating only one flavor. And when we've ordered one flavor, the clerk is always surprised, probably because there are such great flavors to marry: pineapple and coconut, coffee and mango, or cherry with chocolate chunks and almond.
Florence is considered to be the birthplace of gelato (17 C.), and according to some, the best gelato in Italy can be found here. Perri and Jim obviously had a gelateria in Florence that they wanted us to try. So at the end of a day of sightseeing, we marched into town with GPS, euros, and spoons in hand. It was exciting to walk the maze of streets and watch the arrow (us) get closer to the destination (gelato!). We turned the corner, and on the edge of a miniscule piazza was a gelateria with a line of patrons. Bingo! The rest was simple. We had been told to order "riso, if available" which we did, and we sat down in front of the nearby church and licked, slurped, and sucked the pure white concoction, enjoying the little chunks of rice in the mix.
Mission accomplished!
What clever friends! Ah, that took me back to summer of, well, a looonngg time ago, when I was a student backpacking around Europe after my spring studies in Paris. In Florence I discoverd the most amazing confection - gelati (or maybe sorbetto) in a tiny little courtyard, think close to some main plaza. I made several trips there over a few days, always got the raspberry (lampone?) and reveled in those minutes ofsweet pleasure in the heat of a Tuscan summer. ciao!
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