Love & Gelato(19)

“Ready?” he asked.

“Ready.”

“Well, then off to Florence. You’re going to love the city.” He popped a disc in his CD player (who was still using CDs?) and AC/DC’s “ You Shook Me All Night Long” filled the car. You know, the official soundtrack of Ignore How Uncomfortable Your First Father-Daughter Outing Is.

According to Howard the city was only about seven miles away, but it took us like thirty minutes to get there. The road into town was packed with scooters and miniature cars and every building we passed looked old. Even with the weird atmosphere in the car, excitement started building up in me like steam in a pressure cooker. Maybe the circumstances weren’t ideal, but I was in Florence. How cool was that?

When we got to the city Howard pulled down a narrow, one-way street, then pulled off the most impressive feat of parallel parking I’d ever witnessed. Like he would have made a great driver’s ed teacher, if he weren’t so into the whole cemetery thing.

“Sorry about the long drive,” he said. “Traffic was bad tonight.”

“Not your fault.” I practically had my nose pressed against the window. The street was made of gray crisscrossing square stones and there was a narrow sidewalk on either side. Tall pastel-colored buildings were smashed close together and all the windows had these adorable green shutters. A bike flew past on the sidewalk, practically clipping my side mirror.

Howard looked at me. “Want to take the scenic route? See a little bit of the city?”

“Yes!” I unclicked my seat belt and then jumped out onto the street. It was still hot out, and the city smelled slightly of warm garbage, but everything was so interesting-looking that it was completely okay. Howard started up the sidewalk and I trailed after him.

It was like walking through a scene from an Italian movie. The street was lined with clothing stores and little coffee shops and restaurants, and people kept calling to one another from windows and cars. Halfway down the street a horn beeped politely and everyone cleared out of the street to make way for an entire family crowded onto a scooter. There was even a string of laundry hanging between two buildings, a billowy red housedress flapping right in the middle of it. Any second now a director was going to jump out and yell, Cut!

“There it is.” We turned a corner and Howard pointed to a sliver of a tall building visible at the end of the street.

“There’s what?”

“That’s the Duomo. Florence’s cathedral.”

Duomo. It was like the mother ship. Everyone was funneling into it and we had to slow down even more the closer we got. Finally we were in the middle of a large open space, and I was looking up at a gargantuan building half-lit by the setting sun.

“Wow. That’s really . . .” Big? Beautiful? Impressive? It was all that and more. The cathedral was easily the size of several city blocks and the walls were patterned in detailed carvings of pink, green, and white marble. It was a hundred times prettier and more impressive and grander than any building I’d seen before. Also, I’d never used the word “grander” in my life. Nothing had ever required it before.

“It’s actually called the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, but everyone just calls it the Duomo.”

“Because of the domed roof?” One side of the building was capped with an enormous orange-red circular roof.

“No, but nice catch. ‘Duomo’ means ‘cathedral,’ and the word just happens to sound like ‘dome’ in English, so a lot of people make that mistake. The cathedral took almost a hundred and fifty years to build, and that was the largest dome in the world until modern technology came around. As soon as I get a free afternoon, we’ll climb to the top.”

“What’s that?” I pointed to a much smaller octagonal building across from the Duomo. It had tall gold doors with carvings on them, and a bunch of tourists were taking pictures in front of them.

“The baptistery. Those doors are called the Gates of Paradise, and they’re one of the most famous works of art in the whole city. The artist’s name was Ghiberti, and they took him twenty-seven years to make. I’ll take you on a tour of that, too.” He pointed to a street just past the baptistery. “Restaurant is right over there.”

I followed Howard across the big open space (piazza, he told me) and he held the restaurant’s door open for me. A man wearing a necktie tucked into his apron looked up from behind his stand and stood a little straighter. Howard was like two feet taller than him.

“And tonight, how many?” he asked in a nasally voice.

“Possiamo avere una tavolo per due?”

The man nodded, then called to a passing server.

“Buona sera,” the server said to us.

“Buona sera. Possiamo stare seduti vicino alla cucina?”

“Certo.”

So . . . apparently my father spoke Italian. Fluently. He even rolled his Rs like Ren. I tried not to stare at him as we followed our server to our table. I literally knew nothing about him. It was so weird.

“Can you guess why I like it here?” Howard asked as we settled into our seats.

I looked around. The tables were covered in cheap paper cloths and there was an open kitchen with a wood-fire pizza oven blazing away. “She’s Got a Ticket to Ride” was playing in the background.

He pointed up at the ceiling. “They play the Beatles all day every day, which means I get two of my favorite things together. Pizza and Paul McCartney.”