il dolce far niente

Friday night, a fine night to contemplate il dolce far niente.  Italians have known the sweetness of doing nothing for centuries.  I love the phrase.  I think the first time I stumbled on it was in Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert... the phrase then survived the screenplay and editing room floor to make it into the film version.  The other night I was watching 'The Big C' on Net Flix, and there it was again, our heroine planning a trip to Italy to research the concept first hand.

gato il dolce far niente

I'm image googling il dolce far niente.  I love the wild card thrust of an image google, regurgitating everything from art nouveau, romantica, erotica, and of course the obligatory kitty cats that seem to turn up in any random image search.

I like this definition:
An example of dolce far niente is what someone would say to describe that they are laying on a blanket gazing at trees in Florence.

It definitely
loses something in the translation to Arabic and I bet it sounds less than relaxing
إلى حد بعيد دولتشي لا شيء يذكر.

Strangely, when I paste the Arabic into the google news search it yields nothing.

Many more results with an Italian news search.  I can't really translate any of it but in my minds ear it's a lovely, soft murmur in an Italian cafe.

Other stumbles:  there's a restaurant named Far Niente in Toronto, yet nothing by that name in the app store, not yet anyway.  Anyway, do I need an app for that?

Chianti Classico is a nice match for this not-so-frivolous past time.  Rocca delle Macie, 2010.