A Taste of Heaven

by Faith Swartz (United States of America)

I didn't expect to find Italy

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I admittedly am not a food person. I remember the other students in my travel group raving about the foods of Italy, each bite they took seeming to give them a blissfulness like no other. But when I eat food, I taste simply that. Food. They ate layers of lasagna and tasted the promised land. I ate layers of lasagna and tasted, well, lasagna. They savored spoonsful of gelato as if they were tasting God. I savored spoonsful of gelato, which, if I may be so bold, tasted like any other scoop of ice cream I’ve ever had, simply appreciating the coolness that slid down my throat after every swallow, distracting me from the heat. I’m going to be honest; I find it embarrassing to say that I visited Italy and didn’t sense the strong attraction to towards the food that my companions seemed to revel in. I do, however, have a very simple story to share in regards to a particular fruity item that I had the honor of eating in Florence. Directly after visiting the Duomo di Firenze, a lifechanging experience in and of itself, a few of the other students and I decided to walk around the cathedral, waiting for the rain to force us back to our hostel. Cart after cart lined the piazza, some selling Pinocchio dolls of various sizes with painted green hats and yellow shirts and others selling Venetian masks, each with a feather to adorn it. On this short stroll around the heart of the city, I spotted a quaint little food stand. I led my small group over to the stand and stood in front of the various fruits as if I was waiting for one to call to me, begging me to pick it over the others. I’m sure this was a curious sight to the middle-aged man that operated the stand, who patiently sat and stared at me, waiting for me to make my decision. I finally narrowed my gaze to the apples and chose the biggest and reddest that I could find in the wooden crate holding them and promptly paid for it. After washing it off with the water from the spigot attached to the cart, which I was instructed to do by the man who operated it, I took a bite, then another, and another. Please, forgive my ability to exaggerate, but that apple was easily the best that I had ever tasted. Ripe and succulent, I never would have imagined that such a simple fruit could taste like, dare I say it, heaven. In that moment, I knew that what I was experiencing must have been what the other students experienced while eating their plates of pasta or slices of pizza. If the fruit of the forbidden tree had tasted nearly as good as that single apple sold to me in Florence, it really is no wonder that Eve was so eager to take a bite.