Exhaust Fumes

I hate to start out a post on a sour note, but I have to be honest - I am NOT doing so hot over here. I don't feel sick, I just feel like I've been hit by a sledgehammer. Like someone drained every ounce of energy out of my body. Look at the weather today:

And all I can think about is bed. I'm hoping it's just a travel hangover - Rome was rougher on me than I knew. It will be an early night.

Italian this morning was a little rough. I just could NOT get myself to focus. I deal with tiredness a LOT, but even this is rare for me. Our teacher told us the legend behind panettone, a sweet bread eaten at Christmas here. She even brought some for us to try - it helped. It was delicious, and I'm going to ask around for a good recipe. It's very fluffy with a strong vanilla flavor and dotted with raisins. Even through my exhaustion haze, I could tell this was GOOD. Project: Panettone will soon be put into action.

I dragged myself back to the apartment and immediately went back to bed. I slept for a solid 2.5 hours straight, and the oddest thing is I slept fine last night, just not enough.

You don't want to hear whining, you want to see some good eats! And as promised, here is my breakfast experiment:

Overnight CEREAL!

You see, I was totally the kid whose favorite part of the bowl of Cheerios was that last bite of completely milk-saturated Os. And, being a lover of oats, I figured, "hey, why not apply the overnight soak method to regular cereal?" The results: I'm a fan! It was a consistency very similar to oat bran, which I actually prefer to oats and miss very much :) Very thick, almost pudding-like, especially after I added the yogurt. I sprinkled cinnamon over it before putting it in the fridge and it really seeped throughout and gave a great flavor boost. Now obviously if you like your cereal super crunchy, this is not for you - but it was a fun experiment and I'm definitely going to try it again!

I was still a little hungry (it was a small bowl - it was, after all, the first trial), and so I made b-fast #2:

Tea, toast & eggs. Quickly becoming my new favorite snack. And as you can see, I was much more successful with peeling this time...

Blogged a bit and did some emails while staring longingly at the beautiful blue sky, and then made some lunch:

Very light salad, just to keep my energy up for some errands.

I felt a little better once I was out and went for a short walk before yoga club. Did some window shopping...

Ooooh so perrrrty:)

 And had to snap some pics:

Oh Duomo, I'm going to miss you so in a few months!

Hit up the grocery store, came home, made coffee, went to yoga. I knew that if anything would help this exhaustion, yoga would. And it did - we held shoulder stand for a gloriously long time. There is something about seeing the world from upside down for a while that just makes a difference.

One of my favorite poses:)

Tonight was deemed Sushi Tuesday in our apartment after we tried to go last Monday, only to discover that essentially every single sushi place in Florence is closed on Mondays. I haven't had it since the day I boarded my plane here - I was ready for some maki!

We went to a take-away place pretty close by. We ended up waiting for a good 25 minutes, which seemed a little excessive considering the phone didn't ring once when we were in there and we were the only customers, and there were 4 of us. I just got a salmon roll and a cucumber roll, nothing special but I like the simple rolls more anyway. Sushi is one of my favorite meals because it involves fish and it never fails to leave me satisfied but not never heavy-full. Because we waited so long and then walked back to the apartment, I ripped into it before thinking to snap a picture! But I promise, it looked very similar to this:

(Pretend that tuna is salmon or cucumber.)

I reaaaally wanted some gelato, so I dragged a couple of my roomies out with me. The place we had in mind was some random recommendation and I didn't think it would be particularly picture-worthy (which was silly - is gelato EVER not worthy of a photo? no. silly gilly!) But the place was closed, so we went to Grom in hopes that the March flavors would be there. It turned out that the March flavors are...the exact same as the February flavors, but Grom is pretty amazing in general, so I wasn't complaining. I was sad that I forgot my camera, though :( I got pear and Bacio, which is essentially Italy's Hershey Kiss - it's a popular chocolate with a whole hazelnut in the middle. Trust me, it was GOOD. Hit the spot.

I definitely need to hit the sack soon, but I couldn't resist the call of the blog:) Tomorrow I'm going to Mercato Centrale (I'm out of my beloved pecorino! The horror!) and out to lunch to my new Wednesday spot, Sergio's. A domani!

~Namaste~