Florence - March 2010

Bell Tower to the Duomo

Walking to Michaelangelo Piazza

Standing on Ponte Vecchio

The Duomo and our hotel, Hotel Duomo, to the left.

Top of Bacilica di Santa Maria

Looking up in the Duomo

Florence. Florence is my favorite. I LOVE that city, and the food is a great mix of all types of yummy Italian. Ohhh, Tuscany, how I miss you. Matt and I stayed here for 3 days. One of the days we took a day trip to Lucca and Pisa...they are about 15 minutes apart by train and only an hour or so from Florence. We had debated on renting a car and driving through Chianti Country, but decided that might be too much of a hazard, after watching the drivers!

To me, Florence has the most beautiful architecture and is a perfectly sized city. I could have spent much more time there checking out the sites, eating and drinking all the goodness, and just soaking it all in. I miss this place!

Chianti Classico - We were told Classico is the best, and I have to agree. It was cheap over there, but is actually pretty expensive here:(

We were skeptical. This restarant, or Buca (which I think means underground in Italian), was a cute cavern like place. They only spoke Italian, but the waiter did a good job of selecting great dishes for us. This was fresh meats and chicken livers...scary, but surprisingly awesome.

Ohhh, yum. This was incredible. Matt got a beef pasta...to me a little too much like beef stroganoff, but still good! Their noodles were always cooked so perfectly it made everything good. My dish was stuff with cheese, but the noodles were so delicate, yet firm...I guess the sophisticated word is al dente :) 

Some dessert..lemony yum. Very light and a perfect ending to the dinner.

Vivoli. A famous gelato place in Florence. I was having my favorite, pistachio.

We couldn't pass up the view. This was a cool piazza, and that architecture in the back is what you see all over Florence. It's colored marble, and beautiful.

Peroni

This was my dish. It was actually some sort of traditional ham and egg pasta. Sounds different, but it was very tasty!

Matt's pasta carbonara

Caprese Salad. The basil was AMAZING. 

Our afternoon break. We stopped in the square that contains the fake David, and tons of other beautiful statues. This was Matt's Big Bear (that's how it was spelled in our English menu :) ). Also, my baby wine bottle, and of course, their cool water.

You can see the Birra grande...I should have included the English version so you could see "Big Bear." I thought it was very nice that they even had an English menu in addition to Italian.

Our 2nd afternoon break; we had to try a Pizza Trattoria. It was so cool. There was an even longer section of pizza selections that went down the right.

Our selection. We were close to dinner time so we split one.

Oh, my. This became my favorite appetizer. Bruschetta. Of any kind. The key was SOAKING anything in their olive oil. Their olive oil was drinkable it was so good. Matt and I got over trying to be polite at dinner, and just joined the other Italians and basked in the olive oil as it ran down our faces and arms:) The other key ingredient was garlic; and LOTS of it. The white bean thing became a favorite. They'd soak them in garlic and olive oil, and oh wow. Delicious.

Bone marrow. Yes, Matt got gross. 

:)

My spaghetti with mussels.

The waiter was so nice. He was like, "oh, I bring you something good." Turns out he brought out a plate of french fries and fried zucchini. Oh, the American stereotype:) We ate them, of course:)

House wine, Chianti. It was cool because we asked how much it was and he was like, "oh I just base it on how much you drink." We drank much of that, and I think it was only about 6 euros. 

Very cool appetizer. It was raw artichokes, fresh parmigiana, and olive oil. Very very good.

My FAVORITE. Pesto pasta, with no holding back on the olive oil. This was my favorite of the trip. I have a slight obsession with pesto.

Matt got some meat thing again. Beef maybe? Very good, too, but not like my pesto. He loved it, so that's what matters.

Not a great picture, but this is spinach. YUM.

Those awesome beans again. Note the olive oil...sigh.

Eating my full plate with wine in hand, of course.

Our spread. We were stuffed!

Very impressive that our bill, with a almost 2 bottles of wine (we were lushes this night), an appetizer, 2 huge sides, and 2 pasta dishes was 58 euro. Of course, that was close to $80, but still. Not bad for all of that awesomeness!