Eye Candy

Tomorrow I'm headed Vienna and Prague for eight days, so there's not a lot of time to write a very in-depth post before I leave, so I think I'll just provide a little writing and some fun pictures. Two days ago I went to the Mercato Centrale to pick up some tomatoes for lunch and then remembered that I'd also wanted to buy some nibbles to sustain me on my upcoming travels. Dried fruit and nuts seemed to work the trick while I made my way down from Denmark to Italy by train in August, so I decided I'd purchase them in the market. I'd heard rumors of a supposedly legendary purveyor of all sorts of dried and dehydrated fruits on the second floor of the market, which was where I was to begin with. This is what I encountered:



Well, needless to say, I got a little carried away and snapped a ton of photos after I had purchased an etto (about 100 grams) each of dried apricots, dried pineapple rings, dried sultana raisins, and almonds. Sort of a boring selection given all that was offered, but I'd had some more exotic fruits (slices of kiwis, limes, and starfruit as well as whole kumquat and baby oranges) from a vendor downstairs that were very underwhelming. These, however, are delicious (yes, I sampled some, but I'm trying to save the rest for my travels!)









As long as I'm on the topic of fruit, I had to add an photo of the oranges that were temptingly hanging off of small potted trees in the garden of the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi. They may look green, but they are definitely oranges. Most oranges are not perfectly orange when ripe and are instead gassed so they will look more appealing to consumers. Yep. Oranges are green.