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Published: June 29th 2010
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We arrived in Florence after a confusing train ride from Monterosso that we are going to blame on St. John the Baptist. Our hotel was purposely only 3 blocks from the Santa Maria Novella train station. It was 12:30 when we checked in to the Alba Palace Hotel. The woman at the desk was very friendly. Believe it or not, by 1:00 with her help, we were booked on a tour of the Chianti region of Tuscany.
At 1:50 we were picked up by our driver who doubled as a tour guide as he fought to get the English out. His attempt at English was more charming than annoying and he was very pleasant. He happened to be a big football fan, and our tour was during the Italy-Slovakia match so we felt sorry for him. We tipped him appropriately though at the end of the tour.
Our first stop was to pick up another couple. As then got into the van, we had an awkward moment of not knowing if they spoke English or not. As it turns out, they we Brazilian and spoke mainly Portuguese. Great.
We drove for 45 minutes to
the Chianti region and stopped at a castle that was built in the 9th century. Turns out it’s a pretty fine winery too. We got a tour of the cask rooms and the aging rooms, and then got a chance to sample their Chiantis and Super Tuscan wines. Not too shabby. We can’t bring any home in the carry-ons, and 70 Euro to ship 6 bottles left us only with memories. Guess what they served to us with the wine? Ham. A Spain flashback?
We winded through Chianti and stopped in the town of Greve. We walked around Piazza Verrazzano (the guy who gave us the name for the bridge in New York) and stopped in a wine superstore. The shop was the size of Binny’s back home, and had thousands of wines from Italy, mostly red. The highlight were these round counters where you could taste the wines. You would buy a card, put it in the slot next to the wine, push the button, and it would pour you a taste of the wine. Each wine’s tasting cost between 60 cents up to 12 Euro. The 12 Euro wine had a price over 300 Euro for
a bottle. There were also plates of food covered by glass where you could slide your card and take the plate of food. We left an hour later with our teeth a little more red. Gigi bought some polenta and Chris got a small bottle of Grappa.
Next stop on our Chianti tour was Radda. It had a small square and little shops. We got a gelato and then heard a commotion. Italy was playing Slovakia then in soccer, and all the locals were watching downstairs in a movie theater. Chris dragged Gigi down to see it just as the final whistle blew, knocking Italy out of the World Cup. One strange thing that we saw in Radda was a vending machine for thong underwear. It looked just like a child’s gumball machine. I’m sure some kid at one time has made a mistake and gotten the wrong thing or thong.
Our final stop was at a restaurant for a traditional Chianti dinner. It started with bruschetta, then out came pasta in a pork sauce. We were stuffed. As we were waiting to leave, out comes the second course: pork and veal, potatoes, and a salad.
They topped it off with tiramisu. We rolled out of there and back to Florence. Throughout the meal we tried to speak in our broken Spanish/English to the Portuguese couple, eventually relying on the Portuguese man’s Iphone’s translate app. Apparently they have been touring Italy and went to the Ferrari factory. Also, they either got engaged or married during the 1 hour in Greve when we were wine tasting. We felt bad that we didn’t fully understand, but at least we would never see these people again….or so we thought (we saw them touring the next day in Florence, then 3 days later in the middle of Rome. Weird.)
That night there were fireworks over the Ponte Vecchio for the festival of St. John the Baptist. I guess it’s pretty popular to set things on fire for this occasion. We walked to the river, watched 5 minutes of fireworks, then left the hordes of teenagers drinking bad beers. We did see a creature swim across the river before we left. Gigi thinks it was an alligator; Chris claims it was the Chupcabri (the Italian version of Chupacabra)
The next morning we weren’t sure how much of
Florence we would get to see as we had to leave for Rome that day. Our first stop was the Uffizi, but the line was down the street. After waiting in line for 5 minutes, Chris went up to the reservations window…turns out for 4 Euro you can make a reservation for the same day. It was 9:30 and we made a reservation for 10:30. Hmm. Was everyone wasting 3 hours of their day to save 4 Euro or did they just not know? We walked to the Accademia to do the same thing and made reservation for 1 pm to see Michelangelo’s David. In the meantime we checked out the Duomo and grabbed a gelato.
After seeing David we broke one of our rules of eating:
1. Eat at places recommended by guidebooks or hoteliers
2. Don’t eat at places where the waitstaff is more than 50% foreign
3. Don’t eat at places where touts stand out front to coerce you in
We went to a place for lunch that we found in the guidebook, but apparently everyone else did too. We were hungry so we went to the place next door:
Zaza’s. A sign of trouble came when Gigi said “Wasn’t there a place in college named Zaza’s pizza?” Sure enough the touts were out there showing us to our table before we could decide where to eat.
We shared a traditional Florentine dish of pate on toast and a mushroom risotto. We also had a terrible spaghetti Alla Carbonara. In the middle of our lunch, a large, Andre the Giant-looking man came screaming out of his restaurant and had to be physically restrained from another man. He was yelling in Italian and everyone was watching. The waitresses from Zaza’s got into it and were yelling too. Chris was pretty sure he heard a few “vafanculo!” in there and had to explain it to Gigi. Google it or use your imagination. We didn’t know what the fight was about so we made up our own story: Andre the Giant agreed to sell his restaurant to the owner of Zaza’s if he would marry his ugly daughter. He agreed but then cheated on Andre’s daughter with another woman. Also, the owner of Zaza’s decided to make the Carbonara sauce with Velveeta, so that made Andre mad too.
After lunch, we got our tickets to Rome, grabbed our bags and were on our way. Our last train ride of the trip, and we were quite glad.
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Stephanie
non-member comment
wow..
you guys are busy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Chris...you are a great story writer!! Miss you guys!