Nicole Tasker Woods

After this Italian vacation, I foresee a lot of salads and exercising in the not so distant future once I get settled back in Los Angeles. Even though we walked an average of 7 miles per day (I have the pedometer – aka – fitbit to prove it) I still believe that I ate my weight in carbs at every single meal. Yikes!

If you are planning a trip to Italy, I highly recommend a few days in Rome proper where you can enjoy the millions of restaurants and gelato bars on ever corner – as well as the never-ending nightlife of the city streets that never seem to sleep.

I also recommend the bread and wine in Tuscany – the chianti was great – as well as the olive oil and balsalmic vinegar – just divine!

The Cinque Terre was very unique. If you are interested in being in a beach town, this is definitely the place to go.

Wherever you end up, always start your meals with a 1/2 liter of wine (red or white) it doesn’t matter the brand, you can’t go wrong and you won’t go broke.

Try every different kind of pasta dish available on the menu, but after you think you’ve had them all, stick with your favorite. It is very interesting how the cooking styles differ from Rome to Sienna to Tuscany to Florence. So it’s OK to repeat a dish in these various regions because it will never taste the same.

Pasta – My all time favorite pasta meal was the homemade spaghetti with Tuscan meat sauce at the Alla Corte di Bacco in the town of Ambra (a few kilometers from the Tuscan castle we were staying in). This restaurant also had the best white wine – whatever it was – served in a 1/2 liter bottle.

Appetizer – The best pre-dinner food was the bruschetta in Rome at some tiny restaurant in an alley way. They toasted the bread perfectly and had the right amount of seasoning on the tomatoes to make it perfect.

Bread – Tuscan bread was my favorite. It had a denser, milkier texture than all the other regions.

Gelato – I can’t say I had a favorite spot for ice cream, every gelato bar had the super dark chocolate (fondente) that I love and I would pair it with coconut or mint or vanilla – whatever my fancy. I do like lemon gelato, but it tends to be a bit tart everywhere you go.

With this vacation finally at its end, I can look forward to my normal, every-day life of driving the California freeways to/from work and spending every available moment that I can with the Big A – the best son anyone could ever ask for.

Once I am back in the swing of things at work and home, I will pick up the blog again (probably about the A-man) – so until then, ‘Ciao!’