We said goodbye to Rome Tuesday morning and took the 8:40 train to Florence, getting in around lunch time, by the time we came out of the terminal. We found food at a little side shop selling Paninis – and they were delicious, Florence just blows me over with their food, but more on that, later. Our hostel is a little past the train station and is really nice, we even have a TV in our room and a kitchen on our floor. After settling in we went exploring a little bit, walking past some open air markets full of leather goods - which Florence is famous for.
We stumbling upon the Duomo, which is way more impressive than I was expecting (that’s a recurring theme, you see.) It's huge and very different from any cathedral that I've seen so far.
We got to bed pretty early Monday night due to complete exhaustion over Rome, and Tuesday was a slow start. Rome was such a huge city with so much to see and we were enjoying it so much that it took a little while for 4 days of intense travel to catch up with us. We took our time and went to see Michaelangelo’s David at the Accademia, which is really, really awesome. It’s HUGE, so much bigger than I was expecting, and the detail is beyond words. You aren’t supposed to take pictures…but….
After this we went back to the hostel and had to worry about several things – Candace’s bank cards weren’t letting her withdraw cash and due to weather and logistical issues we needed to make changes to our travel plans. We decided to ditch some of our day trip plans and spend another day in Florence, and we moved our trip to Cinque Terre due to weather – luckily Christin’s friend knew someone studying in Florence so we got to stay with her for the last two nights we were there. With the extra time,we allowed ourselves to take things slower here and generally enjoy Tuscany on a slower pace than Rome. After figuring the stressful stuff out, we were in great moods again, and set out for our EPIC MEAL that we were saving up for.
We went to Le Fonticini for dinner after hearing great reviews from Monica about it being a life changing experience, and of course I follow her travel advice. This place is really fantastic, we could tell just by walking in. We were led by the owner of the restaurant past an open charcoal grill, fresh homemade pasta, and fresh vegetables and fruits. He let us take pictures and pulled the pasta out for us and told us he would let us come take a picture when the grill was really ready and he was cooking some meats, he explained to us they are one of the only restaurants left with this cooking technique for meats – new restaurants can only use gas grills.
After staring at the menu for way too long I decided on homemade, stuffed ravioli with ricotta cheese in a tomato cream sauce. Let your mind sit on that for a little bit. For dessert I ordered the Tiramisu with coffee, and I can not describe this thing – it was the best dessert I have ever had, possibly the best piece of food I have ever eaten. The coffee flavor was so rich and authentic and the rest was just creamy and delicious and…my God I would have eaten three of them. I just loved everything from the food to the waiter to the presentation. It was definitely pricey – but not the kind of meal you could ever regret.
Thursday morning we woke up and continued our food high – we went to the nearby fresh market full of local products being set out – cheeses, fruits, meats, pastas, everything looked delicious. We got a few free samples and got to chat with one store owner that recommended us a lot of pasta and spice combinations – I ended up buying a bag of Italian spices to take home for my Dad.
We bought some delicious fresh fruit to take on a picnic that afternoon, and we also bought some amazing dried fruit for our hiking on Friday. After leaving the market we packed a bag and began the hike up to Piazza Michaelangelo, it was a little walk away but the view was definitely worth it.
We stayed up here eating our food as long as we could until a thunderstorm started, so we ducked down into Ponte Vecchio to do a little bit of browsing in all of the really expensive gold shops that line the bridge – my grandma would flip here.Nearby is the fake David – standing where the original David used to, as well as an open air sculpture exhibit with some replicas of sculptures we’d already seen before.
After wandering for a bit we went to a gelato place we had read about online and discovered the best gelato so far – I had after-eight and some kind of chocolate fudge flavor and it was heavenly – the flavors were just really strong and the gelato itself was the creamiest I’d ever had.
We were trying to decide what to do when it started to rain again, so we ducked back into our hostel and spent some time listening to music and chilling out for a bit – then we began cooking our authentic Italian meal in our hostel’s kitchen.We had a slight accident with the spices and the pasta was waaaayy too hot – but I really liked the cooking experience and the rest of the dish otherwise – it was fun.
We had an early night to prepare for our very early train out the next morning. We woke up for Cinque Terre at 5:30 and were out the door of the hostel by 6 to catch our train - more on Cinque Terre on its own!
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