Two Days in Tuscany

With a long weekend looming and a guest from out of town visiting, we decided to take advantage of the extra days off and head to Tuscany.  While we had been there before, our guest had not, and so we made plans to fly into Bologna, visit there for a few hours and then spend a couple of days in Florence.  However, life had different plans because our morning flight got canceled which caused us to then only get to Bologna at night.  So, rather than spend any time there, we drove straight on to Florence.

On our first full day, we started off with a pastry and a cappuccino before heading past the Florence Cathedral on the way to the Galleria dell’Accademia to see the one and only David. He was quite large and really impressive in his degree of detail.

In addition to the famous statue, we saw many other statues and artworks, including this really pretty tapestry, before leaving the museum and walking to the Palazzo Vecchio for a cannoli, torta del nonno and another cappuccino.

The torta del nonno was really good!  After the quick break for our feet, we walked across the Ponte Vecchio amid a sea of umbrellas, as it drizzled and was cloudy the entire weekend, before making our way to Pitti Palace.  We walked through the palace exploring the rooms and the artwork and escaping the heaviest of the rain before heading into the Boboli Gardens for a quick walk.

After the palace and gardens, we made our way to a sidewalk restaurant for lunch.  We had some caprese and Tuscan cheeses before the main course of gnocchi with gorgonzola and walnut sauce, tagliatelle tartufo, tagliatelle porcini and ribollita with some Chianti.

After lunch, we stopped for a really nice gelato, and then went to rest for a bit before going out to dinner that evening.  Our dinner meal began with some bruschetta before we enjoyed pici cacio e pepe which was so good.  We finished with some tiramisu and cantuccini with vin santo and a little limoncello.  It was a nice meal.

Our second day, we went to see some more famous artwork at the Uffizi Gallery including Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, Caravaggio’s Medusa, and Titian’s Venus of Urbino.

There were also a lot of sculptures.  It was nice, but really quite big.  After the museum, we decided to see a bit more of Tuscany by heading to Lucca.  The city was nice and had some old world charm, though we struggled to find many food choices for the vegetarian members of our party.  In the end, we settled on buffala and quatro formaggio pizzas.  We spent a couple of hours walking around the city seeing the open squares, small winding streets and cathedrals including one with a wedding taking place.

After driving back to Florence, we went to dinner in an outside square where we had a little Aperol Spritz and Chianti along with gnocchi and cacio e pepe.

And being that it was our last night, we also had to have another tiramisu as well as a dessert we had never tried- zuccotto florentine which was really good!

We finished the meal with an amaro del capo and a limoncello.  We walked the meal off a bit, stopped and bought a leather bag, and may or may not have stopped for one final small gelato.

The next day we caught an early flight back home before our waistlines could expand any more.  All in all, while the travel plans and the weather didn’t really cooperate with us, it was a nice, quick trip.  Bellissimo!