My wife and I just spent 11 days bombing around Italy; Rome, Florence and Venice. Coming from an Italian-American family (half, anyway), my Italian mom and grandparents cooked amazing meals over the years. Plus, living in Chicago, many regions of Italian cuisine are well-represented. Because of this, I was skeptical the culinary offerings would be substantially better than anything I've had stateside. And I was wrong. Still, just like at home, there are good restaurants and bad ones.
The most amazing meal was in Florence at a lunch Trattoria called Mario's. The beef filet was buttery, cooked perfectly and seared with caramelized seasoning. From now on, every steak will be compared with this cut. Here's the kicker: it was $16 and served for lunch. The restaurant procures all their ingredients from the central market across the street, so this piece of meat likely had a name the day before I ate it.
The meat:
The market:
After a few misses, the restaurants that served the best food are places like these that write the menu on the wall everyday, get their ingredients from the local market and it's crossed off the menu when they run out. The language barrier is a little tougher because most of their patrons are locals.
Now for the cities:
Rome
Rome is fascinating because there are two distinct sides: Modern Catholic Rome and ancient Rome. The ruins in ancient Rome are fascinating and I believe with the exception of the Pantheon there aren't actually much in the way of preserved buildings. Most everything was pillaged by popes in the 1500s to build modern Rome and all that's left are the ruins. In Rome, I most enjoyed the spectacle of St. Peter's Basilica and Michelangelo's dome, which we climbed to the top.
Hotel in Rome:
One of the hotel guests had an A45 AMG. Way cooler than our CLA 45 AMG.
Pantheon:
Some McDonald's in Italy have McCafe as a separate store. My wife is the brand manager for McCafe U.S. so we stopped in one of these locations to check it out. Very cool.
Still McDonald's
They have something called a "Sweety" over there, which is a Nutella sandwich. It's not good, which defies all logic that they could screw up Nutella sandwiched between two buns.
Ancient Rome
Colosseum
Walking around the main floor of the Colosseum felt eerily similar to walking on the main level of Wrigley Field. A stadium is a stadium I guess.
Areas like these are cut out around the area of ancient Rome and randomly pop up around corners. Modern Rome is built on top of the ruins of the old city so they're all a few levels below current day.
Vatican City
Sylvester Stallone's ancestors in a Raphael painting.
St. Peters
View from top of the Dome
Venice
We took high-speed trains between cities. What an experience. They're fast, smooth and inexpensive. We paid $330 for two people to travel from Rome to Venice, Venice to Florence and Florence to Rome, at speeds up to 186 mph.
We had one car almost entirely to ourselves.
I didn't care to go to Venice but my wife and I compromised. She got Venice, and I got a day trip to Maranello to visit the Ferrari factory and museum. My opinion of Venice didn't change. It's a tourist trip. While beautiful, it's an outdoor shopping mall built on a lagoon. A day trip from Florence would have been fine. Three days here would have been too much without the day trip.
Hotel in Venice. Built in the 1500s.
Obligatory gondola tour. Our gondolier brings his dog to work.
And then the Ferrari museum day trip.
Having been to the Corvette museum and Nascar museum, Ferrari was disappointing. It's clearly to parade you through the gift shop, which is typical Ferrari. They don't care much about owners of street cars or anyone else and seemingly put up with that nonsense so they can race. The museum is dirty, the cars have swirls and scratches and the presentation is weak, except for the racing part
I took the "factory and Fiorano" tour. Which was essentially a bus ride through the factory during lunch and a drive into Fiorano near the starting line. No cameras allowed. But there was nothing to see anyway except a few pallets of engines, half-built cars and cars ready for delivery.
These 1/5 scale models were about $9,000 each. I believe this is what Ferrari give owners when they buy a car new, matching color until the car is delivered. Or you can buy one at the gift shop.
My rental was an Audi Q2. I don't think it was any smaller than a Q3, perhaps not as tall, but crappy inside. Based on MQB architecture, it drove like a high-riding base Golf. Not bad, but should be called a VW and not an Audi. And diesel, which was lame.
Italian highway rest stops are amazing. Filled with great food, real restaurants and huge selection of deli meats and cheeses.
Florence was my favorite city. Amazing food. More laid back than Rome and the Florentines seem to have a greater appreciation of their culture and history.
Michelangelo's David truly is amazing.
We hit up the Uffizi gallery, Accademia and more but I won't bore you (it's just more marble dicks and such) so here's another cool hatch. The S3 two-door hatchback. I'm not a fan of the S3 in general but this was nifty.
You may think you've got it going on, but you're not Italian-riding-a-Harley-wearing-blue-ostrich-pants cool.
The most amazing meal was in Florence at a lunch Trattoria called Mario's. The beef filet was buttery, cooked perfectly and seared with caramelized seasoning. From now on, every steak will be compared with this cut. Here's the kicker: it was $16 and served for lunch. The restaurant procures all their ingredients from the central market across the street, so this piece of meat likely had a name the day before I ate it.
The meat:
The market:
After a few misses, the restaurants that served the best food are places like these that write the menu on the wall everyday, get their ingredients from the local market and it's crossed off the menu when they run out. The language barrier is a little tougher because most of their patrons are locals.
Now for the cities:
Rome
Rome is fascinating because there are two distinct sides: Modern Catholic Rome and ancient Rome. The ruins in ancient Rome are fascinating and I believe with the exception of the Pantheon there aren't actually much in the way of preserved buildings. Most everything was pillaged by popes in the 1500s to build modern Rome and all that's left are the ruins. In Rome, I most enjoyed the spectacle of St. Peter's Basilica and Michelangelo's dome, which we climbed to the top.
Hotel in Rome:
One of the hotel guests had an A45 AMG. Way cooler than our CLA 45 AMG.
Pantheon:
Some McDonald's in Italy have McCafe as a separate store. My wife is the brand manager for McCafe U.S. so we stopped in one of these locations to check it out. Very cool.
Still McDonald's
They have something called a "Sweety" over there, which is a Nutella sandwich. It's not good, which defies all logic that they could screw up Nutella sandwiched between two buns.
Ancient Rome
Colosseum
Walking around the main floor of the Colosseum felt eerily similar to walking on the main level of Wrigley Field. A stadium is a stadium I guess.
Areas like these are cut out around the area of ancient Rome and randomly pop up around corners. Modern Rome is built on top of the ruins of the old city so they're all a few levels below current day.
Vatican City
Sylvester Stallone's ancestors in a Raphael painting.
St. Peters
View from top of the Dome
Venice
We took high-speed trains between cities. What an experience. They're fast, smooth and inexpensive. We paid $330 for two people to travel from Rome to Venice, Venice to Florence and Florence to Rome, at speeds up to 186 mph.
We had one car almost entirely to ourselves.
I didn't care to go to Venice but my wife and I compromised. She got Venice, and I got a day trip to Maranello to visit the Ferrari factory and museum. My opinion of Venice didn't change. It's a tourist trip. While beautiful, it's an outdoor shopping mall built on a lagoon. A day trip from Florence would have been fine. Three days here would have been too much without the day trip.
Hotel in Venice. Built in the 1500s.
Obligatory gondola tour. Our gondolier brings his dog to work.
And then the Ferrari museum day trip.
Having been to the Corvette museum and Nascar museum, Ferrari was disappointing. It's clearly to parade you through the gift shop, which is typical Ferrari. They don't care much about owners of street cars or anyone else and seemingly put up with that nonsense so they can race. The museum is dirty, the cars have swirls and scratches and the presentation is weak, except for the racing part
I took the "factory and Fiorano" tour. Which was essentially a bus ride through the factory during lunch and a drive into Fiorano near the starting line. No cameras allowed. But there was nothing to see anyway except a few pallets of engines, half-built cars and cars ready for delivery.
These 1/5 scale models were about $9,000 each. I believe this is what Ferrari give owners when they buy a car new, matching color until the car is delivered. Or you can buy one at the gift shop.
My rental was an Audi Q2. I don't think it was any smaller than a Q3, perhaps not as tall, but crappy inside. Based on MQB architecture, it drove like a high-riding base Golf. Not bad, but should be called a VW and not an Audi. And diesel, which was lame.
Italian highway rest stops are amazing. Filled with great food, real restaurants and huge selection of deli meats and cheeses.
Florence was my favorite city. Amazing food. More laid back than Rome and the Florentines seem to have a greater appreciation of their culture and history.
Michelangelo's David truly is amazing.
We hit up the Uffizi gallery, Accademia and more but I won't bore you (it's just more marble dicks and such) so here's another cool hatch. The S3 two-door hatchback. I'm not a fan of the S3 in general but this was nifty.
You may think you've got it going on, but you're not Italian-riding-a-Harley-wearing-blue-ostrich-pants cool.