Continuing my quest to visit all 18 of the caffés described in Joe Wolff's CaféLifeFlorence at least once, I walked a really, really long way today to stop in at I Barberi at the far end of the Centro Storico. When I got there I was completely delighted and enchanted to see the son and the mamma, exactly as pictured in the book, behind the counter: he operating the espresso machine, and she tending the register.
I Barberi seems to have settled back into it's Italian roots, after, apparently when the book was written, a bit of a fling with i turisti Americani. There aren't many of those here these days, at least not in these chilly and sometimes less than cinematic days of January. So I was happy to sit with my espresso amongst the Italian locals who were stopping in for 'a little something' to get them through the rest of the afternoon. It's a very Italian thing, these periodic pit stops throughout the day, one goes into the caffé in one humor, and out in another.