barry continues to explore the mercato, and goes beyond the cheese...

...only to come back to it because, after all, what's life without cheese?

so the fantastic thing about il mercato is that you can get almost any kind of food here. not all of my pics turned out, but imagine heaps of pomegranates, mounds of spinach, oodles of noodles, barrels of oils, and porcini mushrooms as far as the eye can see. this place is a kind of mecca for foodies everywhere; a pilgrimage that needs to be undertaken at least once in a food lover's life to achieve enlightenment.

or, at the very least, a very full stomach.

for a truly authentic experience, join the florentine locals for lunch at nerbone's, located on the main floor of il mercato. go for their traditional panino con bollito (boiled meat sandwich dipped in meat drippings), or their trippa alla fiorentina (florentine style tripe).

of course, a trip to florence would not be complete without a traditional steak. take note: if you're looking for the authentic, go for a cut similar to the below picture. anything else, while WE might consider it a steak, is just a piece of beef for florentines.

...or there's cow testicles. your call.

the homemade pasta we saw looked out of this world! and for those of you who've never tried it, gnudi is the ravioli filling, minus the ravioli. it's delicious, especially with a fresh pomodoro sauce.

look at your cheese in the fridge. now look at these cheeses. look again at your cheese, and back to these! your cheese isn't any of these delicious european concoctions, but it could smell like them if you let it sit on the counter for a few weeks. or, as a healthier more delicious alternative, you could book your plane ticket now.

i think i'll have to have a separate post dedicated solely to cheeses i found in europe. many of them can't be found in edmonton (maybe in montreal), but just imagine if they were! for starters, i'd be 400 pounds and have diabetes, but i would be in heaven so it wouldn't matter!