A taste of Italy: Florence 7

After such a nice meal the night before, we decided to return to our backstreet trattoria, I Tarocchi. This time though we splashed out on the full litre of wine.

This time I had the ribollita stew and Christian had a salad made with spicy rocket leaves, chopped walnuts and slices of creamy pecorino cheese served with a drizzle of honey.

This time we had pizza - Christian had spicy salami (pepperoni in any other country, but here it's called bascio) and I had mine folded over into a calzone filled with artichokes, mushrooms, ham and mozzarella.

This time the bill came to €38. And this time I had left my wallet in the hotel!

I stayed at the table in case I needed to explain the delay, with visions of doing the dishes or flinging the pizza dough. Christian came back 15 minutes later breathless, cold and flush with cash. We handed the cash over to Mama on the till, who had been oblivious to our drama. I was going to leave a tip but she made a point of fishing out exact change, so I took it to buy more ice cream.

Nothing like a delicious meal with a heaping helping of embarrassment! Time to go home, but first some more photos from around the streets of Florence.


Oh, and in case you're wondering, no - we didn't see THE David. There are three in town: the original which is now in a gallery, a marble copy standing where the original once stood outside the town hall and a bronze copy stood on a hill across the river (above). We had to leave some things for our next trip!

That's the Florence trip, stayed tuned for more travels and tips.