Day 10 - Cinque Terre and Florence

‍Today we left the hotel at 8:30 am and headed to Cinque Terre and then on to Florence.   We took the tour bus to La Spezia.  Then we got on a boat and sailed to Vernazza the 4th City of Cinque Terre.  We had a guide on the boat who told us all about Cinque Terre and he also gave us a short introductory your of Vernazza.  John and I decided to climb the tower  (150 steps) to get some good pictures of the city.  Then we found a little restaurant and bought pizza and lemon sodas. While we were eating I saw people stopping over a rope into an area with a No Trespassing sign. When I finished eating, I went to see where everyone was going.  It turned out the area lead to a beach area.  When we finished lunch, we scouted out the location of recommended Gelato shop.  John got lemon and strawberry and I got pistachio and cinnamon.  Cinnamon is now my new favorite.

For the let of the trip from Cinque Terre to Florence we took the train. When we arrived in Florence, we got on a bus that took us to our tour bus and the tour bus took us close to the hotel.  Near the hotel, we said goodbye to our driver Daniele.  We got our room keys and were taken to our room.  Our luggage was waiting on our room.  We had a connecting room and one of the couples (Deb & Pete) had the other room that connected to ours.  We discovered that the connecting does were not locked and if we tried to close either door it opened the other for.  Pete called the front desk and they sent someone up to lock both doors.  Then we showered and for ready for dinner.

We walked the 5 minutes to the restaurant, Il Caminetto.   Our reservation was for about 7:45 pm. We could select the courses.  I selected pasta stuffed with ricotta and spinach, the filet in chianti wine sauce and for chocolate candies and Sherry.   John chose the filet in chianti wine sauce, roasted potatoes and Pana Cotta.  Florence recommended we ask for our steaks medium or they would come out too rare.    She was correct, mine was cooked perfectly.  The filet was high (almost twice the size of a filet in the States).  And of course we had all the wine we wanted.  Whoever told me they had small plates in Italy hasn't been here recently.  We headed back to the hotel at about 10:20 pm.  We relaxed for a bit then headed to bed.Read more