We are in Florence. What a beautiful place. Well compared to Rome anyways.
The history in Rome blew me away. To stand in the Pantheon a building nearly 2000 years old was awe inspiring. To see the Forum Romanum, a place where Caesar walked, was a bit overwhelming. The city itself though was aptly described by Merilynn as “gritty.” I can’t say I loved walking around.
Florence on the other hand, is beautiful. What we saw of it anyways. From the Duomo up to Piazzale Michaelangelo, and the neighborhoods we walked through it was clean, vibrant and lively.
Like Rome, there are far too many dining choices, a lot of them seemingly empty. I’m guessing they make their money during the high season in the summer. We are here in April and it’s busy enough. I couldn’t imagine it in August.
So as I have a few other times on this trip I used AI to search out restaurants near me and narrowed it down to Al Sossta 111, or The Stop 111 in English.
Its actually way too early for dinner. In a lot of Italian cities other than these large, more touristy spots, all the restaurants would actually be closed at this time of the day.. And we would be left to only an aperitivo and a spritz. (Ewwww by the way) We will keep it light so we can eat again later during the Italian dinner hour.
A pizza quattro formaggio for me.
You can immediately tell we we are in a touristy spot. They cut the pizza for us. They normally don’t do that in Italy.
Cut or not, the pizza was awesome. The crust had a chew that you expect from Neoplitan style pizzas. The cheese were very flavourful, with the Gorgonzola giving it a nice little punch.
One thing we haven’t had enough of this trip is greens. So Merilynn went with a Caprese salad.
Pretty standard Caprese salad, but it is a pretty plate. Everything was really fresh and tasty. We always find that we don’t get enough greens while travelling. It really hit the spot and satisfied those cravings.
We really enjoyed the location. It’s on a pedestrian only street and turned out to be a great people watching spot as it just a few blocks from the Duomo.
A great pizza, a nice salad, nice atmosphere and good service added up to a nice pre dinner snack.