The Market & Trash

The Central Market (Mercato Centrale)
Here's a sign on the wall when we enter the Mercato.  In fact this sign can be seen all over Florence, and from what we've been told, is now the law of all of Italy.

Italy has passed a law that states no one may smoke in a public place including restaurants.  We have not seen this law broken much to our pleasure.  The way a lot of restaurants get around the law is to have an outdoor area even in the winter, that is enclosed with plastic when cold and open air when the temperature allows.  Now if you have ever been to Italy, you know that this is a big change.  All of Italy used to be one big chimney of cigarette smoke.  Now you see people on the streets smoking, but no one in buildings lights up.

Now back to shopping at the Mercato Centrale, our favorite place to shop.  If you live in an area that has a major vendors' market like Boston, Cleveland, New York or any other major city in America, then you can understand the makings of the Mercato Centrale.  It is a bunch of vendors indoors in a huge warehouse.  Everyone has a specialty.  There are meats and cheeses, sweets, even just pasta.
Below is one specialty that we hope never to visit, but very popular in Florence.  It's the left-over parts of the animal such as tripe, intestines, all that good stuff......

It's hard for us to believe that this guy makes a living selling this stuff, but he does and it's a good one.

This is even more difficult for us to believe.  Above is a Tripperia and all this guy sells is tripe!  Now that's really specialized.

But there are other places that we do like in the mercato such as

DOLCI!!!!!!!!!!

This vendor also sells breads and some candies.  She's a favorite.  Thank goodness there is a lot of walking to be done in Florence or we would have to be rolled back to American.

We also shop at a little grocery store down the street for everyday type stuff.  They have a deli and some produce when we don't get to the supermercato.  Italian cooks very often shop everyday for fresh produce.  But the mercato closes everyday at 2 (14:00 Italian time) except on weekends.  One day we glanced in the frozen section in this little store and saw this box of pizza.  I suspect they think that Americans eat one kind of pizza and this is it.  

But today we did get to the mercato and, while there, bought a couple of sandwiches and decided to go outside on such a beautiful day and eat while sitting on some great big concrete planters that doubled as benches.  As we looked up we were reminded that Italians have come to love their automatic washing machines, but never saw the need for dryers.  

So we ate our sandwiches and listened to the music played by the strolling musicians at the different restaurants until there were too many pigeons eying our food and too many gypsies begging for money.

What Happens to Our Trash?
I'm sure you were wondering this all the time you were reading our blog.  Well, now you'll find out!  (OK, it was a slow day.)   There are all kinds of workers running around Florence (mostly at night) picking up trash and keeping the streets clean.  They do an amazing job, considering the hordes of messy tourists that come through each day.  A lot of businesses just put or leave their trash out on the curb and it magically disappears.  However, Maria Chiara, our landlady, said we were to take our garbage and recycling to some of the many colored bins that are located around the city, every couple of blocks.  The closest to us are at Mercato Centrale and are of three types as shown below: Blue is for cans, glass, and plastic, all together.  As far as I can tell, all kinds of plastic go in.  There isn't any label saying "only #1 or #2" like at home. Yellow is for paper and cardboard.  You can see one man dutifully dumping his in.

 

Grey bins are for everything else: "Rifiuti non Differenziati", regular trash. 

Also I got a neat photo (at least for garbage lovers) of a small garbage truck filling up a larger truck right in the middle of a busy street.

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On Thursday we plan on going to Fiesole outside of Florence with its Roman ruins.  It's also where the rich go in the summer to escape the heat because it's up higher in the hills.