26 october 2022
On saturday I went to my friend's birthday party. She's from a city in Tuscany while I'm from Lombardy. To get there I had to take a flixbus (not the most) comfortable way to get there but the cheapest by far. I departed at 8:30 and arrived by 12:30, I wasn't travelling alone, some other friends were invited so we went together. When we arrived we got picked up by another of our friends that is from the same city and stayed at her place, ate lunch, lasagne made by her grandma, and then visited Prato's chinatown.
There we found this milktea place that had 2 cats. Both very cute, white with dashes of gray and blue eyes. While there I was dying of a heatstroke, honestly, I was dumb enough to depart while wearing the suit for the party instead of changing clothes over there...
After that I went to Prato's station to meet the person I was gonna stay at for the night. We went to pick up her girlfriend and then got to his house to get ready.
We were supposed to arrive at the party by 6:30PM, we were supposed to have an aperitif before dinner, but our late asses got there by 7PM (tbf the birthday celebrant was late too). The place was gorgeous, a villa on a hilltop facing the city of Florence, we could see all the pretty lights from the city. The aperitief was held at the poolside on the left of the villa. Everything was delicious, there were cured meats, bruschettas and italian fried dumplings. With that they served prosecco.
After the aperitief we moved to the villa were the dinner was going to be held. Inside there were multiple tables for the relatives and outside, in the garden, a big table for the birthday celebrant and us, her friends. There were 4 groups of friends: us from Milan (so the people that she met during her studies), her italian friends from Prato, her teammates from when she used to practice synchronized swimming and her chinese friends (she's chinese and Prato has a pretty large chinese community). The seats were assigned and I was seated directly infront of her. On my right side all her friends from Milan and her friends from Prato, on my left all of her chinese friends and, at the end of the table, her teammates.
Dinner was a 10-course meal, well at least on paper (but 2 of the apetizers came together so I'd say it was more something like 9).
Apetizers:
- Smoked swordfish slices
- Some kind of mollusca that had more stuff on it (don't remeber what it was, I didn't eat it 'cause it was too messy)
- A shrimp in a pumpkin creamsoup
- A potato chip in a small pool of mashed potatoes with some asparagus gratin if my memory serves right
Entree:
- Risotto with mushrooms
- Tagliatamale with ragu
Main dishes:
- Fish filet with some spinach and some kind of souce on the side
- Roasted meat in a pool of mashed potatoes and another souce
Deserts:
- Fresh fruits
- Birthday cake
Everything was delicious (and fancy), especially the apetizers, well everything about the party was pretty fancy, I mean, everyone was wearing a formal attire.
I got to know some of her italians friends from Prato during the aperitief, and the chit chat continued during the dinner. As for her chinese friends, I didn't get to talk much with them, they didn't open up easily, it was a typical situation with minorities (typically they tend to stick together and mainly interact with people within the community). Despite that I got to know 2 people, the ones closer to me on my left, Vincenzo and Luciana (those are italian names, it's common for chinese people to choose their italian name and use that one. Usually people mess up their chinese one). Vincenzo is specializing in something related to design for clothes or something like that, while Luciana is in her 5th year of highschool. During dinner I also discovered that Luciana is a good artist, she draws quite well so I asked if she'd be interested in making me a drawing/painting kinda like the one that I talked about a few blog post back. We exchanged instagram handles and later on we made an agreement for the painting.
Just before eating cake we sang her happy birthday, she opened a bottle of rose, not before shaking it a bit, so some of it spilt on the gifts. After that we took some pictures (oh, there was a professional photographer as well). Following that we ate cake and sang a bit at the karaoke, that one was a bit lame, the mic kept peaking, so meh.
Then came the opening of the presents. Me and two other friends pooled some money for the gift and got her a fountain pen. It was good and all if only there weren't another two fountain pens as gifts, and those looked better than ours sigh. Someone else got her some jujutsu kaisen merch (a hoodie and two buttons). The most expensive gifts were a bottle of Dior perfume and jewels (three different groups got her bracelets).
Everyone left by 12:30AM. Overall the birthday party was very fun. Now I'm looking forward for my drawing/painting from Luciana. I made her choose the subject to draw among 7 pictures, can't wait for it to be finished.