by Katherine

Key Words
Reasonably Priced, Simple, Burgers
                 
Would We Come Back?
I would, and I would definitely recommend it to any Americans craving a Burger. But, Brad would head elsewhere.   

          So in the middle of the day, our driver recommended that we stop for lunch at "The Crazy Butcher".  Being that our driver had taken us on an excellent adventure thus far, we took his recommendation. The restaurant sits  above the butcher shop of Dario Cecchini in the town of  Panzano in Chianti. The day was lovely, so we sat outside at a large family-style table, though we didn't end up conversing with the people around us.

by Bradley

          When we stopped in Greve in Chianti we had no idea our driver had already planned a snack and wine tasting for us! He is friends with those who own this Butcher/Cheese shop so he took us in for a treat.

          We got to try 4 different variations of the same cheese, it was pecorino I believe. We tried regular, aged, with crushed red pepper, and with truffle! The truffle one was definetely our favorite but they were all great. I also liked to dip the crushed red pepper one in the honey, it was so good. Even the bread was great, crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside. 

by Bradley

          Let's list some great things about Tuscany: rolling hills, vineyards, wine...CASTLE WINERIES! Castello di Verrazzano is one of many wineries located in an old castle, and it's the first winery we stopped at for a wine tasting on our tour of Tuscany. It's amazing to not only taste the amazing wine from this region, but to also get to tour awesome castles as well.

by Katherine

         Since we are both huge wine lovers now, I wanted to take a tour of Tuscany, see the little hill towns,  and go to a handful of wineries to try the local wine. Any organized tour seemed super expensive and only took you to one or two wineries. I did some research and found that the best thing to do was hire a Private Driver, someone who could drive you where ever you wanted to go, but didn't have the credentials to give you an actual tour of anything (in Italy, you need an official license to give customers an actual tour on top of the license you need to drive them around, both cost $$$).

          After all of my research, I had my heart set on Alessandro Cammilli, a private driver with stellar reviews and what seemed to be cheaper rates! Luckily  he still had one day available while we were in Florence/Tuscany, so I eagerly booked him up. His rates really depend on how many people there are in your group. We paid €300 total, which was cheaper than most, if not all, organized tours, and we ended up going to a bunch of wineries (where we most certainly needed a driver by the end of the day - could not have driven ourselves!)  and stopped at 5 or 6 hill towns. Really, you can't find a better deal out there!

by Bradley

Key Words
Reasonably Priced, Good Pastas
                 
Would We Come Back?
Yes! Katherine has already been here multiple times. The cheap pastas are delicious!          

           We stopped in at another restaurant Katherine had visited when she came to Florence to see her friends. Actually, they all became regulars here and became friends with the owners. It's family owned like many little restaurants in Italy and the whole family is involved in cooking the food, serving, etc. Katherine remembered one of the guys and they had a conversation remembering years past.

by Bradley

          If you get tired of all the other tourists in Florence, take a bus to one of the hill towns surrounding the city. We decided to make our way up to Fielsole which overlooks Florence. It's a cheap way to spend your day, seeing Florence from a whole new angle.

by Bradley

          Even a quick lunch in Italy can turn out to be good. We were hungry and needed to eat something quick before we were on our way so we stopped at basically fast food pizza right outside the Duomo, the most touristy area in Florence. I was happily surprised that the quality was not terrible due to trying to feed tons of people.

          The slices were gigantic and oozing with cheese; although they aren't the most noteworthy food we ate, they were still delicious. It was a bit expensive for pizza slices, but they were pretty filling for just a couple of slices. We got a slice each of Margherita pizza, Pepperoni pizza, and Pepper pizza, yum!

by Katherine

          My number one goal while in Venice was to find a shop that fills your empty water bottle with wine for only a couple of euros! I found  these brilliant places while researching Venice and I knew I needed, not wanted, but needed to get me some water bottle wine! Only problem, all the addresses I had google mapped were just flat out wrong! We went to  4 or 5 that I had mapped out, and none of them were these wine places. Google maps failed me! I HATE Venice's addressing system - just stupid! It was nearing the departure time of our train and I still hadn't gotten my precious plastic bottle wine. I was desperate; we started asking shop owners if they knew where one was. And thank goodness, we eventually found one! 

by Bradley

          Venice has their own version of tapas and they are called cicchetti. When you walk around Venice make sure you stop into a few restaurants and see if they have a standing bar/food on display. You always stand for cicchetti or take it on the go, its small bites of food for real cheap and you'll also want to get an ombra. Ombras are small glasses of wine, also cheap. This style of dining is great for trying a lot of different things at a lot of different places!

          On our cicchetti crawl we ended up stopping at 3 different places. It was lunch time, and the hours were a little weird at some places that we tried to go to; they just weren't set up for cicchetti yet. I'd suggest wandering around at dinner time to have the most options open!

by Katherine

          One of the first things I did in Florence was head over to Grom, which was my favorite gelato place the last time I was in Florence. They had the BEST pear gelato - it was pure heaven and I couldn't wait to go there everyday this trip! And then it turned out that they didn't have it - not that they were out of it temporarily, but that it just wasn't a flavor option anymore! Yes, that depressed the hell out of me. So after that, I was on a constant search for some pear gelato. I found some in Venice! The pear flavor was very present, but the bits of pear skin were obnoxious. Though it most certainly wasn't as good as Grom's, I was happy to have found something to feed my pear gelato craving!