Lucy & The Sky

Such a bummer

When your cake turns out horrendously dry :( I have never baked such a dry sponge! So disappointed! My recipe is usually so un-dry (hate using the word moist) that I can leave it out for days without it going hard. Gah!

Italia

So here I am once more in Italy for what feels like at least the 20th visit but is in fact only the 5th. I’m currently sitting in a Milanese living room doing exactly what I do every time I come here on a weekday, that is studying the delectable art of passing the time (and battling with a foreign keyboard of course!)

So far, it has been a relaxing trip; it’s so lovely to come back and see, taste, smell and hear things I’ve felt before but only here. Things that are already becoming iconic in my memory, like the smell of the apartment and the taste of real pizza and the sound of Italian emergency sirens. Just the little things.

For some reason, every time Michele meets me at Bergamo airport, I’m really nervous about seeing him again. I feel as if we start fresh again every time one of us visits the other; I’ve told him this before but he almost looks different to me by the end of each trip than he did at the beginning. Che strano. I never really know what to say or how to be…

Somehow, Michele has developed an ability to know exactly when I am hungry or thirsty without me having to say anything. It’s quite miraculous being the foodie that I am. Having arrived at Bergamo airport at 10pm, I assumed that dinner in Italy would have been and gone (especially after an hour and a half of airport shenanigans, coach and metro leading to a 11:30pm arrival at his) which was a shame as I hadn’t managed to stomach more than a cupcake before my flight due to a late, hearty British pub lunch. But this time he asked me how hungry I was before promptly whisking me to a pizzeria without even stopping to leave my luggage at his. Dream. We went to the pizzeria at the end of his road (above) where I had a lovely cheesey feast with anchovies (cheese + anchovies = my late night foods of choice) which was absolutely deliziosa.

Il prossimo giorno (ieri) siamo andati a Lodi. This was a lovely way to spend my first day. We didn’t leave the apartment until about 12.30 after I (finally and briefly) met his stepdad (always a nervewracking experience but when it’s in a different language… dear Lord) before catching the metro and then train to the lovely Lodi (above). I instantly liked Lodi. It smelt like flowers. Beautiful, soft, purple, fragrant flowers. And it must have been a strong scent because my sense of smell is pretty shit. We walked down a long road towards the centre, along which were trees and beautiful buildings, my favourite being a romantic villa with a giant balcony over its porch from which hung rich garlands of violet and lavander flowers. The piazza was pretty empty when we got to it but on our way back later, after exploring many galleries as part of the photo festival, it was a little busier. Happily, I had my second Italian pizza in two days, this time covered in bufala. My terrible Italian came into play when the waiter asked me what I wanted to drink and I told him which pizza I wanted..

The galleries were beautiful. My favourite was a series of photos following the life of a 19 year old woman after the birth of her first child to her death from HIV in 2010, 17 years later. Michele’s favourite was a fantastic collection of photos about climate change, held in a large old church. He said that the series about the woman was great together but alone, the photos weren’t so good. I agree to an extent; to get the full impact of the story and the progression from young, apprehensive mother to withering, dying woman, you must see all of the photos. But the stand alone impact of some is undeniable; the gaunt woman in a hospital gown taking a desperate, sustaining drag on her cigarette as an example.

Later we headed back and had dinner with Michele’s stepdad who had cooked calamari with tomatoes, olives and pasta followed by fish with tomatoes, olives, capers and a type of vegetable we didn’t quite manage to translate (and which I didn’t recognise) It was all very delicious and I’m proud of myself for having eaten the calamari - I’ve only eaten it twice before and I can be a bit fussy about fish that isn’t a simple fillet (the sight of tentacles originally horrified me!)

Lovely lovely lovely. It was bed time pretty soon after. And now here I am today. Woke up at 10am, did a little gentle revision, ate lunch with Michele’s stepdad (a lovely vegetable soup with piselli e carciofi and then ricotta di caprewith tomatoes and that unidentified vegetable) with whom I had a rather successful conversation in Italian about language learning and the influences of alcohol on such acquisition.