Went to my lesson this morning as usual, at 11, then met Greg and we walked across the Arno into the San Frediano neighborhood to have lunch at Alla Vecchia Bettola. It's a welcoming place with simple, delicious, traditional food and a local crowd. No one is in a hurry here, and most of the customers are regulars who know the owner, the waitstaff, and occasionally poke their heads into the kitchen.

I like this neighborhood a lot, it's most often beyond the tourist zone, and retains vestiges of what Firenze must have been like, 60 years ago.

I look forward to the day when I am able to fully appreciate the subtleties of Vasco Pratolini's Le Regazze di San Frediano, which I have, but is, so far as I know, published only in Italian. It is the story of a post-war time, long gone now from Firenze, but one that still reverberates through my primal consciousness: the Italy before jetliners began uploading alien masses, from foreign lands, when the neighborhood in which you and your family lived was your world, your universe, and it was all there was, and it was enough.