This is my second trip to Florence, but my first as an adult. I was here on the last family euro trip back in 1998, and came back as it’s situated in the middle of Tuscany’s wine country and it’s the easiest city to take a wine tour out of. When I got there I did the same thing we did the last time we came…I didn’t have a hostel reservation. I cruised around the city near the train station, and found one fairly quickly. That hostel only had one night available, so I didn’t really unpack much of my stuff but ended up going for dinner with my two roommates and we just walked around looking for a good restaurant. After walking around for a while we found one near the Duomo, and sat down for a plate of… you guessed it Pasta! After dinner we grabbed a couple beers and just chilled outside on the patio of the hostel before getting bitten alive by mosquitos. I found a new hotel online, and booked my wine tour and just chilled out for the rest of the night.
The next day, I found my new hostel after a bit of searching and decided to relax there for a while as I was still feeling sick. Lucky for me the hostel had satellite TV, and the world series was airing, so I got to catch up on a bit of baseball for the afternoon while resting. That night was just spent relaxing and making dinner at the hostel (it’s a luxury if the hostel has a kitchen in it!)
The next day was spent on the wine tour through Tuscany. The tour I decided to go on went to two wineries and Dario Ceccini’s butcher shop/restaurant for lunch. When I read about this part, I was sold on the entire tour. I read about this famous butcher in a food book about a year ago and being able to go to the butcher shop was fantastic…and the food was GREAT! The first winery was really nice, and we spent some time with the winemaker, who gave us a tour of the winery and the grounds.
Like I said before lunch was fantastic. We walk into this tiny butcher shop and there is this towering smiling man behind the counter talking in rapid fire Italian and greeting every customer as they were long lost friends! We got handed a glass of wine, and there was fantastic salami, and bread with oil on the table to sample before we went up to the restaurant. The meal upstairs was fantastic, it was a communal table that normally doesn’t take reservations but because we are a tour the –sometimes- save a table for us. The meal was fantastic, and obviously included a lot of meat. Beef Carpaccio, their twist on a meatloaf, porchetta, potatoes, a salad we didn’t touch…and more wine! It was a great restaurant, with a great vibe. You sat beside different people and just started conversations with them. I was sitting beside a group from Vancouver so we started talking about the city and Eleni’s school and stuff like that. It was nice to speak to a group of Canadians and be able to say “eh” without everyone noticing. The rest of the meal went by well we ate talked and just relaxed before going to our second winery
The second one was smaller and a bit nicer. We spent some time with the wine maker, who let us taste the wine just as it had been pressed. The wine is supposed to ferment for 20 days and we tried it after only 5 days. The wine maker was apparently very excited about this year’s crop as the weather was perfect for wine making and should be a very good year.
That night I – again - just chilled out in the hostel with the people who were around. We chatted and chilled out as I packed. I was leaving for Milan the next day on the high speed train.
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