Italy Round-Up

For your convenience and pleasure, here's a round-up of my recent posts from the trip to Italy Rachel and I took a few weeks ago. Enjoy!

Sicily

Calabria and Puglia

Rome and Florence

Cinque Terre, Milan, and Venice

And last but not least, THE FOOD!

Viva l'Italia! (Part 5 - THE FOOD)

Ok folks, now for what you've all been waiting for...THE FOOD. Because what is a trip to Italy without loads of delicious food??

Rachel's first meal in Italy: prosciutto e melone (ham slices and melon...that sounds kind of gross in English).

My first meal: a margherita pizza.

Gelato! For those who aren't aware, gelato is like ice cream but more creamy, more delicious, and more better.

Gelato in a brioche! (Gelato in a sweet roll.)

Arancini (or arancine if you're from Palermo) - deep fried rice balls filled with cheeses, ragus, and other deliciousness.

La cioccolata - Italian hot chocolate, thick and dark.

One of the few disgusting things you'll find in Italy--Chinotto is truly an acquired taste.

Nutella...............

Perhaps the most cost-effective meal we ate in Italy, and it's a lot more interesting than it looks. That far thing is a calzone, the middle thing is filled with mozzarella and salame piccante, and that one with a bit missing is filled with wurstel.

Behold: the most delicious pizza in the world, the Ferrari. Toppings include: tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella, gorgonzola, salame piccante (their pepperoni equivalent), bruschetta, speck, parmesan cheese, fresh origano (who am I kidding, all the ingredients are fresh), and pepperoncini oil.

More gelato. That dark stuff is basically chilled nutella.

Eating pizza on our hotel balcony in Taranto.

Focaccia! Delicious bread, salted and spiced and olive oiled, with fresh tomatoes and olives cooked on top.

Panzerotti! Basically, deep-fried calzones.

Una frappe--an Italian milkshake.

The most delicious focaccia in the world, in Bari...

...from none other than the Paneficio Fiore.

Pasta alla carbonara in Rome.

Pasta all'arrabiata, also in Rome.

We had gelato at least once a day. Usually twice. And, one time, thrice.

Tartufo - a delicious dark Italian chocolate cake thingy.

Eating dinner in Rome across the piazza from the Pantheon.

Bruschetta! Check out that basil....

Gnocchi and ragu.

More carbonara.

More cioccolata italiana.

Fruit! Fresh fruit everywhere!

Eating dinner by the sea in Monterosso al Mare.

Pesto genovese.

Fish ravioli with shrimp and zucchini.

Pesce di spada! (Swordfish!)

Focaccia in Milan...but let's be honest, nobody does it like they do in Bari.

Perhaps the most delicious gelato I had while in Italy, drizzled with nutella.

Sipping chocolate...basically melted chocolate in a cup.

The only thing I remember about this meal is that it was far and away the most expensive meal we ate in Italy.

These shoes are made of chocolate. These. Shoes. Are. Made. Of. CHOCOLATE.

Last pizza in Italy--that's mozzarella burrata, basically a hyper-creamy, buttery mozzarella.

That's it, everyone. To sum up: Rachel and I went to Italy, saw a million cool things, ate a billion delicious things, and had lots of fun. It was amazing and we're already planning a return trip. The end.

Viva l'Italia! (Part 4: Cinque Terre, Milano, Venezia)

Who wants more pictures from Italy? I imagine everyone in the world is shouting yes right now, so who am I to stand in the way. Next stop on our Italy trip was Cinque Terre...

Monterosso al Mare. Totes gorge.

Hiking from Monterosso al Mare to Vernazza.

Artsy shot ftw.

Being awesome.

Captions are really unnecessary at this point, aren't they....?

Vernazza. Unfortunately a few of the trails were closed so we didn't make it to all five cities.

Gelato break.

I swear with a little effort this could totally be one of these pictures...

View from the roof of our hotel in Monterosso al Mare.

After the Cinque Terre, we moved on to Milan and its outrageous Duomo...

La Scala Operahouse.

The Milan Duomo. I'm not kidding, it's outrageous. At the top of each of those spires is a different Saint.

Giant bronze doors to the Milan Duomo.

Roof of the Duomo--it's made entirely of marble, foundation to roof, so people can just wander around up there amidst a forest of spires.

Mace Windu special effects included.

We caught some rehearsals for a crazy concert that was going to be happening the next day. This is Elisa singing.

Did I mention the Milan Duomo took about 500 years to build? No joke.

Elisa!

And, last but not least, we zipped over to Venice (Venezia) before heading back home to America...

For some reason I didn't have high hopes for Venice, but it's basically as cool as everyone says it is.

Although it's apparently a dying city; residents are moving out by the thousands each year because of the high cost of living and, er, transportational difficulties.

Gondolas!

Some people even think that within the next thirty years, Venice will be nothing but a museum slowly sinking into the sea.

Il Duomo di San Marco/St. Mark's Cathedral.

Listening to some tunes in St. Mark's Square.

St. Mark's Square. It's crazy to think that a place that was once the center of the known political and artistic world now only exists for tourists. Not that I didn't mind being there, but it was something of an ethereal experience.

Arrivederci, Venezia.

Aaaaand that concludes our tour of Italy! But wait--we're not done yet. In the next day or so I'll publish one more post, perhaps the most important post of all (at least when it comes to Italy)...

...in the next post, I'll be talking about food. Run and tell that.