First trip to Rome/Florence...Eating and drinking my way through!!
 

Well..i'm back at work and having major withdrawal.

We went to italy last week, 2/17-2/23. 5 days and nights, 3 in Rome 2 in Florence. This was our first trip to europe. I'm 25 and my husband is 28. we're young DINKS with the goal of seeing some awesome things, drinking good wine and eating excellent food.

To make this easier, i'm breaking things up in several categories:

1. Travel/Packing clothes/comments list
2. Hotels
3. Tours
4. Restaurants

I hope this will make things easier for people as they are looking for specific things.


1. Travel
We left last Saturday to go Rome. Yay! We've been all over the carribean, US and Canada but have never been to Europe before. We flew US airways through philadelphia to Italy. Because I have a lot of FF miles we upgraded to Envoy (business class) for the overnighter.

This proved to be an excellent decision (well worth 60k points and $300 extra). Envoy class is awesome! Greeted with champagne, choice of Filet or Crabcakes for dinner (not too shabby), couple more glasses of wine. Then we went to sleep, woke up..had breakfast and landed! All in all, we got about 5 hrs of sleep which was good enough for us.

Landed in Rome on a beautiful morning at 8:30. Customs was uneventful. We were picked up by Rome limo shuttle for 35E. The driver had our name on a placard, very easy. Drove us to our hotel.



This is what I packed (and fit in a carryon!):
- 2 pairs of jeans
- 1 pair of black slacks
- 3 lululemon black athletic pants
- 1 black down vest (like a northface vest)
- knee high black boots (4 inch stilettos)
- puma sneakers
- earth negative heel calf boots
- 4 dressy tops
- 1 cardigan
- 3 tank tops
- 3 t-shirts
- 2 long sleeve black shirts
- 1 zip up hoodie
- 2 pashmina wraps
- 1 knee length kenneth cole waterproof coat
- socks, undies, sunglasses etc.

Comments on my packing:
1. Every night i wore my boots to dinner. There are a lot of cobblestones but there are a lot in my city so I was used to it. 4 inch stiletos are NOT advised after 2 bottles of wine.

2. it's about 60-63 degrees farenheit right now in Rome, a little cooler in florence. MOst days I wore a long sleeve shirt, zip up hooodie, black vest and my athletic pants with pumas as my daily wear. This proved very comfortable.

3. My husband wants me to say that it is OKAY to wear ATHLETIC shoes. He was very mad that he had to wear dressier/yet casual (Born) shoes. I have to admit that he was right in that there were tennis shoes everywhere. Not white shoes, but like pumas/new balances. In the future, I would let him wear his athletic shoes during the day trips and switch to dressier at night.

4. Ladies, current trend is very similar to states. I saw tons of Jeans with Knee high rider boots on. Lots of high heels, jeans tucked in shoes type trends.

5. I didn't use a money belt. Both my coats and my hoodie have pockets on the inside. I put my money in there. My husband did have a money belt but we didn't really use it. I carried a large purse to hold my umbrella, maps,etc. No problems..it never got slashed, stole, etc.

Checking in for more later. I am not that interested in Category #1, but am eagerly looking forward to 2, 3, & 4.

Hotels:

we stayed in 3 hotels:

Rome:
Residenza Canali de Coronari
http://www.residenzacanali.com/

I highly highly recommend this Residenza. It was 130 E per night. It is in a FANTASTIC location, one block from Piazza Navona (literall). It is on a quiet side street off Coronari on a street full on antique stores. They have, I think, a total of 6 rooms. The first night we were in Room 4. it was super little and had a teeny window that gave no light, but the bed was comfy and the room was clean...plus the location couldn't be beat. The second night, the concierge told us they had a cancellation and would we want to upgrade to a larger room? we said "of course!" and upgraded to room 1. This is a NICE room. it's huge and it has a large terrace overlooking the surrounding rooftops.

Pros:
- Location (i also walked by Teatro Di Pompeo which i think is also in a stellar location by campo di fiori)
- People that worked there (very friendly, spoke english, super helpful)
- Breakfast (Great breakfast spread..cold cuts, cheese, fruit, croissants, danish, fruit tarts, yogurt, nutella, toast, cereal)
- Price - 130E for how central we were...I could not beat.

Cons
- There's no elevator. We are able bodied so it wasn't an issue. They will carry it for you if you can't carry
- Because there's no elevators...there are quite a few steps! (just want to make any disabled people aware)

Florence - Westin Excelsior Florence
I'm a Starwood platinum member and I travel a lot so I used my starwood points for a stay at the excelsior. What a grand hotel. Rack rate is 250E a night. Very luxurious...loved my heavenly bed and huge shower. We had a really nice terrace overlooking the duomo. The location of this hotel is EXCELLENT. it sits on the Arno river and is about 3 bridges (4 min) from Ponte Vecchio, Uffizi, Oltrano. It's located in Santa Maria Novella about 2 blocks from the famous pharmaceutica. The concierges were very helpful.

Pros:
- Great Location
- Beautiful hotel
- Friendly Concierge
- Loved being on the arno river

Cons:
- Would normally be a bit expensive of a hotel, but if someone is used to typical luxuries of an American hotel, I would suggest this hotel to them


Rome - Westin Excelsior Rome
For our last night, we went back to rome and stayed at the Westin again (another free stay using points). We got upgraded to a huge suite which was fantastic. While I liked the hotel, I do not like the Via Veneto area. I think it is stuck up, overly expensive and very "touristy". it's really close to the embassies and some fancy places, but we thought it was very far from where we wanted to be.


For a first timer, I would stay in the Piazza Navona/Campo Di Fiori area. I think it has the most restaurant selection and is the most "happening" area. While I didn't make it to Trastavere, I think via veneto/termini and vatican are too far from the action for a "first timer". So much was walkable from our area (Vatican = 15 minutes, Campo = 5 min, Pantheon = 10 min, Colloseum/Ancient ruins = 20-25 minutes) that we never needed a taxi or bus when we stayed in the Piazza Navona area.

A lot of people on this board like to do their own walking tours with guidebooks and such. We decided to pay for a few small, private tours, because we figured that it would be worth it to have a real, knowledgable person explain it to us and get the most out of the experience, rather than read a book and look at a painting at the same time.

An example is that we had done the Uffizi and Accademia on our own. While we like museums, we aren't artists or people that study/read about history/art all the time. After a while, all the paintings in the uffizi looked the same. the audioguide (16E) was very boring and wasn't updated for paintings that had been moved around. We got almost nothing out of our Uffizi experience which we attribute to the fact that we hadn't had time to study the uffizi ahead of time to truly appreciate, and we couldn't read the books and look at pictures at the same time.


Tours - We went on three different tours:
1. Scavi tour under St Peter's
2. Ancient Rome tour through Context Rome
3. Vatican Tour with Vatican Tours Inc.

1. Scavi Tour - this has been gone over quite indepth, so I won't get too into it. It was a great experience. I am not catholic (protestant) and thought it was really interesting. Our guide was Cornelia and she was very fun and knowledgeable. It is a great honor to be one of a hundred some each day to see the necropolis. I highly recommend everyone to get tickets to see it. After the tour ended, we walked through St. peters on our own.

2. Ancient Rome - 130 E (65 per person + 11 E for entrance fee) This was through context rome. Our guide was Olivia. It was a 3 hr tour of the Palantine hill, Forum, Colosseum and the Arch of Constantine. This was a really interesting tour. we learned a ton of stuff that I never would have known. We were with 5 other people. I think 6 is a good number for a tour, i would not want to go much more. Personally, I found the Colosseum the most interesting because I have always wanted to see it. Our guide had her most interest in the palatine hill. While the Palantine is really fascinating, there isn't much to see since it's really a "ruin". I admit I got a little bored. In the end the tour took 4 hrs. Since we had gone to scavi/st peter in the Am and then walked to the colloseum and did the ancient tour in the PM, our feet almost fell off. This was a great tour. I loved not having to carry 4 books and read and look for markers that my books were telling me to look at. I would recommend the Context tours to anyone

3. Vatican/Sistine/St Peter - Vatican Tours inc 168E for 2 people. This was my FAVORITE tour out of the three. I think the reason why I liked it so much was that it was a private tour just for the 2 of us so it felt very luxurious to have a knowledgable person with us.

Our tour guide was Ryan. I would say he was in his early 30's. he moved to italy to learn italian and got involved with vatican touring. He was great at guiding us to the key/best exhibits, paintings, tapestries scuptures. He pointed out things that we never would have known. He spend about 20 minutes explaining the Sistine Chapel (which is amazing, BTW). Overall he helped us understand and enjoy our experience so much more than a book would. After the Vatican, we went to St. Peter again (since we hadn't known anything before) and he spent an hour with us in St Peter's. Overall we spent 4 hrs with Ryan together...money well spent for a private tour.

The BEST part was that they have people that stand in line for you. We skipped the ENTIRE line. This was very convenient as the hours for the vatican are very short during the winter, yet lines are still very long.

really looking forward to the restaurant portion of your report!!

ok the good part....food!

i did a ton of research on this website, slowtrav and chowhounds.com. with the limited time we had there, it was very important to me that every meal be great. with the exception of 1.5 meals which was my fault for choosing a restaurant on impulse (bad idea) the meals went very well

Rome - Sunday

sundays are tough in rome since a lot of the restaurants i wanted to go to were closed.

first meal - Der Pallaro (B+) for lunch. i know that it is in Rick Steves book and probably really touristy (although we were the only non-italians there?), my cousin made me promise to go. it is 2 blocks off of campo di fiori and we were starving..plus we thought it would be good to have a meal where we didn't have to worry about ordering.

the owner is really cute. she's this cute old woman with an apron and she was so excited to see us. she sat us down and ran over with her rick steves book and pointed at it. cute. for the antipasti 4 plates rolled out:
- fennel salad (good! i had never had fennel before because i hate licorice/anise, but it was pretty mild in flavor)
- prosciutto/cheese platter
- beans in a tomato sauce (our favorite)
- olives

Second course came out shortly
- rigatoni in a pomodoro sauce. my husband is a big guy ....they brought me a normal portion plate of the pasta, they gave my husband a BIG BOWL of pasta ...probably 3x my portion and told him he needed to eat it. really funny. my husband was enthusiastic in the beginning until he realized it was too much food. the owner kept coming out and asking him if he liked it and he felt so bad that he thought he needed to eat it all. This was one of our favorite pastas the whole trip.

Third course
roast veal in a light wine sauce and potato chips- roast veal in rome looks like thin pork chops. it tastes like very tender pork chops. it was good. potato chips were delish!

fourth course
peach cake. the cake was a biscotti crust. pretty good. an older gentleman that worked there came over and told us to dunk the crust in the wine. good stuff!

1/2 liter of house wine - we're really picky about wine but decided we would have house wine for dinner to save for a good bottle at dinner. wine was very grapey...but hey, it's wine!

total was 44 Euro for the two of us. a great deal with the vast quantities of food that we ate. I gave this restauarnt a B+ because the food was very good/solid, but not outstanding to our other meals. this was one of the friendliest restaurants we went to so for the ambience i would do it again. great starting meal


Dinner - Cul de Sac -( A ) (piazza Paquino)
yes! we are ready to eat again. Cul de sac is open on sunday night so we figured we'd try it. this is an enoteca a block off of piazza navona. I thought i twould be a great wine bar with just a few food selections, but they actually have a very good array of food.

wine - 2000 brunello di montalcino - Banfi (good wine!)

starters
trio of pates - we tried the pheasant with truffles, veal with tobasco, pate with cognac ( can't remember what kind) - our favorites were the truffle and the tobasco

trio of meats - we had some prosciutto and lunza something (sorry). best cold cuts. i wish i could bring prosciutto back to the states! it came with a nutty cheese....some type of pecorino or parmesan

pastas - Lasagna and Bucatini all' Amatriciana

both were very good but the lasagna was AMAZIng. best ever...okay, tied with dh's italian grandma. very very very good. Both of us loved the lasagna. the noodles are thinner, it looked like there were about 12 layers in the lasagna each very very thin.

Reservations are mandatory as this is a very small, narrow restaurant. We really liked this place, hence an A. creative food, tons of wine choices. great choice for sunday dinner. i can't find the receipt, but i believe it was under 80E total.


DAY 2

in the morning we went to the scavi tour. by the time we were done with that and walking through st. peter it was 11:30. it took us an hour to walk to the Colosseum because we got SO lost. our ancient rome tour started at 1, so we only had time to buy 2 bottles of water and a can of pringles for lunch from the overpriced trucks by the gladiators. 18 E. YES, that is 18E for 2 water and a can of pringles. this lunch rated a C!!

Dinner - Ditirambo - (A) (A+ from hubby)
Ditirambo is in a tricky location. the address is Piazza della cancelleria. we thought it would be on cancelleria but it is actually kiddy corner, opposite of grappolo.

the waiters here are veryyyy cute!

they gave us an english menu that had the italian name and then english description. we were quite appreciative!

Pasta:
I had the tonarelli cacio e pepe and hubby had the gnocci with pork rib sauce. I LOVE cacio e pepe. how do they get it to mix together? i don't get it. Hubby declared at the end of the trip that the gnocci with pork rib sauce (tomato sauce flavored with pork) was his favorite pasta/dish the entire vacation.

Meat:
DH had the lamb with tartufo (truffles) and i had the veal with shallots. we had a side order of the potatoes with truffle (did you know we like truffles?) lamb was good, a bit skimpy on the truffles. veal was good but i didn't realize it would be the same light sauce as at der pallaro. ignorant as i am, i thought a shallot sauce would be more with redwine/port reduction than a light broth sauce. good...but not what i expected.

the potato with truffle was amazing. they were thinly sliced potatoes like potato chips with melted cheese (mozzerella) and truffles/oil on top. delish delish!

for dessert, we saw everyone eating this one dessert. i am queen of pointing and saying "what is that?" "that" was Mille-feuille with Moscato sabayon cream and pure chocolate Valrhona. i'm not sure how to decribe this. it was like phyllo dough sheets layered with cherry rum cream and chocolate criss crossing the outside. it was good...but a little too sweet for me.

we had a montepulcino wine, about 25E. total bill was 91 E for two.

Gelato - Giolitti (B)
http://www.giolitti.it/loc-e.html

i think gelato is maybe more exciting to eat on a warm night than 45 degrees at night. perhaps it's too cold and not quite for a person that has only had ice cream once in 2 yrs! i admit upfront that i am not a big sweets girl...my husband is the sweet guy. i thought some of the flavors had a weird taste to them...but the hazelnut flavor was very very good.

it was good, but not great enough that we searched out gelato any more on this trip.



Florence + back to rome, Next

Florence

Snack - Nerbone
on our first day in florence we went walking around centrale mercato (why are there pinnochios everywhere?) we went inside the shopping food mall and saw:

Snack - Nerbone, A+. i remembered all the raves so i got in the very long line to order a panino con bollito.

panino con bollito is like a roast beef (but not, but same consistency...a fatty beef, slow cooked for many hours so the fat starts to fall apart) on a really good roll. they slice the beef off a huge hunk, put it on a bun, add salt (maybe onion salt?) and offer you two sauces. sauce one was green, perhaps a basil in olive oil or a pesto ish type thing? the other was a hot pepper relish. I got the hot pepper relish. I admit i was skeptical. it was grey meat on a roll with pepper relish. It was delicious! a little fatty, but so good. i have no idea what they boil the beef in but it was worth the 15 minute wait to experience. at 2.50 E for a substantial sandwich, I understand why everyone lines up for this place.

Lunch - Trattoria Quattro Leoni - B+
I know another poster thought this was a very touristy place, although when we went we were definately the only english speakers...lots of italians on a work mid-day lunch wearing work clothes. A lot of sites liked their pear pasta (fiochetti alle pere).

antiapasti - we split a bruschetta pomodoro. light, refreshing.

pasta - i had to try the famous pear purse pasta (Fiocchetti di pere con salsa di taleggio e asparagi). DH had a taglieri with meat sauce. Dh's pasta was good but not mindblowing. We LOVED the pear pasta. it sounds weird but it was so good. if you like cream sauces that are savory and sweet, you would like this dish.

we also ordered two veggies - fagioli con olio and verdure fritti = beans with oil and fried veggies. these were uninspiring.

quattro 4 leoni is a solid restaraunt, but the pear pasta puts it a level up. I still have remorse that we didn't go back the next day for more pear pasta.

with a 1/2 liter of house wine, it came to about 40 E


Dinner - La Giostra, A++

this was our favorite meal. my biggest regret (bigger than pear pasta) was not coming back here the next day and sucking up the price. the atmosphere and food here were awesome.

the restaurant is very eclectic, but cute, lots of twinkly lights everywhere. we were greeted by the fun and eccentric owner with 2 glasses of prosecco. fun. we were really not very hungry due to all the previous meals of the day (see above) so we ordered two pastas, and meat.

after we ordered, the owner came out with a plate of complimentary antipasti. many wonderful things. here are some of the ones that i remember (2 of each for the 2 of us):

- buffalo mozz (SO good) with basil/tomato
- mortadella made of donkey (poor eeyore but good!)
- bruschetta with tomato/basil
- stuffed zucchini
- balsamic eggplant
- celery root with a creamy sauce
- pate on little toast rounds


best antipasti plate we had on the trip and free. can't beat that!

Pasta:

spinach and ricotta gnocchi in bacon/tomato sauce and I had the pasta fagioli with hand torn noodles.

Both were very good. my DH's grandma makes the best pasta e fagioli (her fam is from the region and the secret is that she peels and mashes 2 cans of canellini beans into the soup). this was- equivalent good to gramsy's. the pasta was far superior to the crappy box ditalini at home. dh's spinach ricotto gnocchi were really good.

meat:

I had the osso buco and DH had the chianna filet with tartufo (truffles). osso buco is prepared differently here. it's not fall of the bone, it's more like a veal chop. different, but I liked it a lot. Dh's filet was the BEST filet he and i have ever had. perfect medium rare filet. TOns of truffles all over...lots and lots of beautiful truffles. at 30E for the filet, we thought it was an excellent price as we have paid more than that for a filet in the states. can't rave enough about the incredible filet.

dessert - we are so gosh darn full but insist on something. we have the strawberries with orange liquor and cream. light and very good.

we had a bottle of chianti riserva san felice. big production of moving it to a decanter and tasting.

total bill for 2, 127E. pricey to other meals? yes. looking back was it worht it? yes.

Thank you for the terrific trip report. So glad you loved La Giostra as much as we do!

P.S. What's a DINKS?

DINK - double income no kids
DINKS - plural of dink

Can't wait to try these restaurants in April! If you're still in Florence, do try Sostanza. The steak florentine was fab and the meringue dessert with cream, chopped chocolate bits and nuts was so different and heavenly light.

Great report- since I can relate to a lot of your report, could you suggest an area in FLorence to stay that is not off the beaten path. My husband and I like to be in the center of the action but not necessarily the noise. We are going to Rome,Florence,Venice Apr 4-12.
Thanks

Loved the report== thanks!

hi lorlexrik1!

Glad you have liked it so far. Florence is very small compared to Rome. If you take a look at venere.com and click on the map of hotels in Florence, we stayed in the Santa Maria Novella area, right on the river, halfway through. To walk from Santa maria novella to the Uffizi took less than 10 minutes along the river. SMN to the duomo took 15 minutes.

For the most central, i'd go by the Duomo (but will probably be kind of loud as that IS the center).Personally, I really enjoyed being on the river. It's just so pretty and peaceful. If you'd like to be along the arno river, I think either Santa Maria, Uffizi, Palazzo Strozzi or Santa croce are nice. Via de Tournabuoni (in Palazzo StrozzI) is a busy street and where the high end stores are (Fendi, Tiffany, Bvlgari etc).

Overall florence is MUCH less hustle bustle loud than Rome. I think you'll be okay wherever you are, just determine what kind of things you are interested in seeing and plan a hotel 0-2 from where most everything you want to see is.

HTH!

Great report??
Two questions... can you post the websites for your walking tours?? Did you just reserve online before you went?

Also... did you make dinner reservations before you left?? Did you make reservations at all??

all dinner reservations were made by the hotel the day/day before we had dinner. we never had a problem getting reservations.

http://www.vaticantoursinc.com/
we did the 3 hr vatican tour. I can't say enough good things abour our tour guide and how awesome he made our vatican experience.

test123

Great trip report. I just got home from Rome/Florence, so it was great to read yours (mine took forever to write!) It sounds like you had WAY better food experiences than I did, so my hat's off to you. Thanks for sharing :)

enjoyed your report! I especially appreciate the food report since I'll be back in Italy in May.

I too loved pear in pasta - in Florence, my best meal on my last trip to Italy was at an enoteca called Coquinarius - the pear with pecorino ravioli was out of this world. It too was in a light cream sauce. It was so good I went back the next day, despite my short time in Florence and so many other restaurants to try.

We will try La Giostra this time.

love the restaurant info! thanks for all the details.