Brenda's last night...

Brenda is gone. She left at 3:30 am this morning to take the Autostrada back to Rome and then hopped a plane to Canada. But before that we spent one last night together in Tuscany. I'm pretty sure I'll never forget it.

I got home from work at 6:00 and we (Brenda, Tobey, Tobey's Mom, and I) started off on an adventure. Which of course, as all good adventures do, began at Zagara's. The main purpose being to order pizzas for supper. But we fueled up on coffees and sparkling water while we were there. We told Antonio that we'd be back at 8:30 to pick up the pizzas.

Then on our way to gelato (how could we not have gelato on her last day...doesn't that go against every rule?) we stopped at co-op where Tobey picked up peaches for peach cobbler (oh you thought the gelato was dessert? Oh no, no, no! That was a snack).

The gelato was amazing, like always. I had two. And technically Brenda had two too, one with us and one in Siena earlier in the day. Oh, and we also took some gelato with us, you know, to go with the cobbler.

We were all blissed out on gelato and didn't realize we had 15 minutes to do a 30 minute drive to get to our pizza's on time. We panicked. Well, Tobey and I did. So we took off. We made it to Zagara's just as the pizza's were coming out of the oven.

That's Antonio. I feel confident saying he is the World's best pizza maker. I can't even handle it. It's ridiculous. There were 5 pizzas and we were going to be 5 people. So, yes, that's one whole pizza each.

Over the course of 3 hours we ate 5 pizzas, peach cobbler, and gelato for the third time in a day. We were delirious with happiness. It was the perfect send-off.

I said goodbye to Brenda at 12:00 am as we stood together looking out at Massa and all the twinkling lights in the Arno valley. Never before have I ever felt so present in a moment. Brenda beside me, Antonio's pizza inside me, and beautiful Tuscany all around me...this is my life. Thank you Brenda for coming...for 2 weeks Italy was more sparkly and shiny than usual.