Ultimate Europe Trip 2016 Day 19: Flying for Pizza
The moment that Jenn and I have been dreading since booking this trip has arrived. No not the end of the trip, we still have six days until that travesty. No, today is the day we have to board an airplane at 6AM to fly us from Budapest to Florence.
We woke up at the ungodly hour of four to get down to our hotel organized driver to the airport at 4:30AM. This sort of timeframe for a flight should be outlawed. Luckily we had gone to bed early the night before so waking up wasn’t too much of a struggle. We got to the airport, checked all of our bags except for Jenn’s carry-on and were off.
Our first flight was to Brussels, a little under a two-hour flight. With a little less then forty-five minutes in the flight the gentlemen sitting directly in front of me came back to his seat and plopped down hard. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but then a minute later a male attendant for Brussels airline brought him a Coke. When he did the man fell completely forward into his lap, completely passed out. The next two to three minutes was complete commotion as they dragged him out of his seat and laid him across the first row of seats. The good news is he did awake a short time later with the help of two passengers who were Doctors. He as you probably have already guessed was diabetic and just needed some sugar.
With that scare out of the way we departed in Brussels with a short layover and basically walked onto our next flight to Florence. We made it into Florence a little after 11AM, grabbed our bags and got a taxi to take us to our hotel, The Hotel Regency. This is a very different hotel from any we have or will stay at on this trip. It’s a small leading hotel in the world that’s a converted villa. It only has thirty rooms and each room is slightly different. Our room situated on the second floor has a beautiful view of the courtyard and dining room. It’s nestled in a small residential neighborhood only a five to ten-minute walk to most of Florence’s major attractions.
After we checked-in, recorded a room tour, we went out in search of lunch. We found a quaint small café about ten minutes away that we stopped at. Jenn went (not for the first time in Florence I’m sure) penne with meat sauce and I had the spaghetti carbonara. We both really enjoyed our meals, although not the best Italian food ever, it was nice and fresh and hit the spot. At this point we were exhausted. With the trip slowly winding down and the very early travel we decided to avoid getting sick and walk around Florence before going back to our hotel and taking a nap.
We both literally passed out. We didn’t wake up until dinner time and by that time we were ready for more Italian food. This time we spent a little more time finding a place to eat and boy was it worth it. We found a café about a fifteen-minute walk from our hotel. The streets of Florence really start to come alive at night. We arrived at La Cantinetta a little after 7PM and got a great table for two right inside the restaurant.
We both started with a glass of their house red wine. Jenn ordered their spaghetti with bacon, garlic, hot pepper and ricotta cheese. It was to die for. I don’t often wish I had ordered pasta but this one was amazing. It was a bit on the spicy side though so we had to order some extra water. I went with a prosciutto pizza. The pizza itself was out of this world and the fresh prosciutto was the perfect pairing. Unlike my pizza in Vienna, this one I finished easily.
From dinner we made the short fifteen-minute walk back to our hotel, watched another episode of American Crime Story: The People v. OJ Simpson and passed out. Although we were exhausted from our journey to Florence it feels amazing to be back in Italy, eating great food and drinking even better wine. I know both Jenn and I are really excited for the next two days of good eats and drinks.
