Day 77 - Foooooood

So today I woke up kind of earlyish and went on yet another tour that I booked.

This one was a food and wine tour = happy Bo.

We started by walking to the markets, and just generally walking around and speaking about Tuscan food, it's origins and what traditional Tuscan dishes are. Basic history of Tuscan cuisine.

THEN! The good part came. We got to taste some cool Tuscan things. First we had garlic (uncooked cloves) that are marinated in a certain type of white wine, and you can totally just eat the whole clove raw, tastes kind of pickled. It's REALLY good. Then we had olives done the same way, it was better than a normal olive, but I'm not a fan of them anyway.

Then REAL Parmigiano Regiano, and we tasted that with first a sweet jam, and then with a spicy jam (the guy called it a mustard? lol) Then we got to taste it with real aged balsamic vinegar. OOOhhhhhhhh it was SOOOOOOOO good. I wass going to buy a bottle but it was really expensive :S

Then we go to try real Chianti wine. It actually wasn't bad, but I'm really not a wine person.

So everything we tasted is procted with a DOP which is basically a stamp of approval authenticating the products as coming from the correct regions.

After this I decided to wander around for a while, and I stumbled into a leather market. I bartered and bought some souvenirs. Then I happened to run into a couple from busabout Jenna and Scott. They are really nice and I ended up hanging out with them for the rest of the day.

We just wandered around, looked at some leather, had some awesome gelato. I had banana and raspberry, and they both tasted like the fruit had just been frozen and mashed, soooo yum.

We wandered down to the river, and had a bit of a look, then we walked back to the hostel.

We decided to meet up in a few hours to go sit on the terrace room of the building. So we met up and watched the sun set over Florence, the view from the roof is AMAZING. They rope it off, so I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to go up there... lol But we did and I have been back every night.

After that we went out to dinner. We TRIED to find somewhere that wasn't Italian, but we struggled... so we found an Italian place that had a trip adviser sticker, so we went it. it was ok... really busy, and the food wasn't AWESOME. i think my chicken wasn't cooked properly. But it was ok, and cheap for what we got.

We all just went back to the hostel after that. Was a pretty good day.

Things that made me happy today; Authentic parmigiano Regiano. Lived out one of Dad's bucket list items there.

Things that made me sad today; Not finding anything that wasn't Italian.... I'm very over Italian food. Lol yes stone me to death for saying that now.