Dragonflight Dreams

I wanted to share some honeymoon photos with you guys, but wasn’t sure how to go about it. We visited 5 different cities (Rome, Florence, Venice, Nice and Paris), and did day trips to half a dozen more, so breaking it up by place would mean a LOT of blog posts. We also took about 1500 pictures, so trying to do it in one post clearly wasn’t going to work. I finally settled on just sharing some highlights of our three favorite things: the food, the art, and the scenery. Today is the food. Apologies in advance if it makes you hungry. 🙂

Here’s some pictures, you can click to embiggen:

First stop in an Italian coffeeshop/bakery – hot chocolate and decadent dessert.

Trying Italian coffee for the first time.

Tasty meal in Rome.

Tasty meal in Florence.

Wine tasting in Tuscany.

Wine tasting & delicious pasta in Tuscany.

Almost through the LONG line at the World Champion gelateria!

I tried 3 flavors.

Ian tried two.

Tiny stove in our Venice apartment where Ian cooked me soup when I was sick.

First food in France was, appropriately, quiche.

At our cooking class in Nice, mixing up some chocolate lava cake.

Ian chops things for a salad in our cooking class in Nice.

Ian is very pleased with his pot o’ mussels in Bruges.

Belgian waffles in Belgium!

Last meal in France, fish and sweet potatoes.

Ian digs into his lamb, last meal in France.

Italy was our happy place for food. We were actually pretty bad about taking pictures of our Italian meals. We had a lot of amazing pasta. In fact, throughout all of Italy, we only had one bad meal, and that was a lunch provided by one of our day tours where we didn’t have a choice. Even the meals we cooked from groceries were good! Our two absolute favorite things in Italy eating were 1) the wine tasting lunch included on our day tour through Tuscany. It was at an organic wine estate and farm. We got to try 4 different wines (including Chianti!) and the pasta was handmade, and it was just absolutely delicious all around. 2) Gelato. All of the gelato. One of our stops on the Tuscany day tour was San Gimignano, which unbeknownst to us beforehand is home to a gelateria that has won a World Champion title twice. Of course we had to try that out!

In France, the food was still good, but was a lot richer, so became a bit much after a day or so. Their pastry game is strong, though! I ate my weight in pain au chocolate, which somehow I did not get a picture of me eating even though I had a million. We also had the unexpected pleasure of experiencing Paris’ ‘leading weekend brunch’ (according to their website, which I looked up afterwards). We were wandering around after dropping off our bags at the hotel, since we couldn’t check in yet. We pretty much went into the first place we came across that looked promising. They told us they were only serving the brunch menu and asked if that was ok. We said sure, and sat down. Then they brought us the brunch menu, at which point we realized this was a much fancier place than assumed. Most expensive meal of the whole trip! But well worth it.

We also had signed up for a 3-course Provencal cooking class in Nice. It was interesting, and the food we ended up with was tasty for the most part, but it wasn’t much of a cooking class. It was more just a ‘chop all of this’ type class, and not so much cooking (we didn’t touch the stove or oven once). They didn’t provide copies of the recipes, either, so we unfortunately can’t duplicate the dishes we did like. But it was an experience!

Our day trip to Bruges netted some fun foodie bits, too. We tried some traditional Belgian dishes for lunch- mussels & beer for him, the regional beef ‘stew’ for me. Then we gorged on some Belgian waffles, and visited a chocolate shop to pick out our stash of Belgian chocolate to bring back home.

Overall, I think we have never eaten so well in our lives. It was a lot of good, quality food, and I feel guilty now back home when we happen to get fast food.

What has been your favorite foodie experience while traveling?