Firenze Gelato Festival - Next Year, Go and Visit It.

We were planning to go to Rome on the Friday but, then news of the Firenze Gelato Festival came and I made the point to the family that it would be foolish not to go. We've been in Florence for 9 months now and I've hardly eaten any gelato. Ahem.

So, I headed down with fellow gelato friend, Laura, baby N's best friend P. For €4 we got a ticket that gave us 5 tastes. A taste being equivalent to the one 'scoop' you get as part of your standard two flavour gelato. Good value and good gealto. At various points round the city were stands housing 5 or 6 artisanal gelaterias from in and around Florence.

Notably, few if any of the stands I visited were on my gelato map of Firenze. Most I hadn't heard of. This isn't just bad scholarship on my part it is in part that Firenze is a big place with many gelaterias, most out of site of us guidebook led oafs.

This photo lists the ones from Pizza Santissima Annunziata stand:

Here I tried: Madagascan chocolate, pear and parmesan ('molto particolare' as the guy serving it said), rice pudding, fig and walnut, strawberry. All were excellent but I think I enjoyed the fig and wlanut best. A quick cup or two of the free drinking water and we headed off to the Duomo where, behind the baptistery another stand was set up.

Here I ate orange, Persiana (rose water and white chocolate), and tasted the frankly awful riso con funghi porcini.

Though I didn't really get as stuck into the festival as I could have - I didn't watch any demonstrations nor visit anywhere but the two stands mentioned - I thought it was a great festival. Well staffed, plenty of gelato and good fun. If I didn't have a baby that needed putting to bed and kids that needed picking up from school. I would have stayed for a lot more.

I also got interviewed for Italian TV. In Italian. I doubt it made it on to telly though. Maybe it'll be used for a piece on how foreigners can't speak Italian properly, or something.