Our last stop on our European adventure was Rome. It was so hot! Apparently, we visited in the middle of a heat wave. We stayed at Hotel Aventino, which was a little off the beaten path, but very nice and calm. It was located in a residential area on a gated property with a little garden. Once inside the gate, it really did not feel like we were in a big city at all.

After arriving in Rome, we checked in at the hotel and went out to buy tickets for a bus tour. I'm not a huge fan of these, but because the metro system in Rome is not all that developed, I thought it might be an easy way to get around and ensure that we hit all of the hot spots in our short time there. Here we are roasting on top of the double decker!

We got off at the Vatican stop. The line for the Vatican museums and St. Peter's Basilica was so long! We decided that a look from St. Peter's Square would suffice and headed a couple of blocks away to visit one of Rome's best shopping areas. You see, not only were we running out of time to purchase souvenirs for a few hard-to-shop-for family members, but one of my goals on this trip was to find a fabulous handbag. Rome was my last chance to do this! Anyway, I will pick shopping over touring a museum any day.

Mission accomplished! I found a beautiful handbag at Cocinelle. It was on sale, and it qualified for the VAT tax, so it ended up being a very good deal. The funny thing is that Kristi bought her Italian handbag at the very same store! We figured it out when I got home and we realized that our bags have the exact same lining material!

After a full day of sightseeing via the bus tour, we went to the Spanish Steps before dinner. Right around the Spanish Steps is some very exclusive shopping. These stores were all so expensive that I didn't even go in any of them. It was fun to see all of the people out taking their evening stroll, which is what the Romans do every night.

We ate dinner at Vinando, which was recommended by my work friend Heather. It was excellent - very cozy and full of real Romans. We had zucchini flowers stuffed with cheese and fried for an appetizer. So good!

TMT's eggplant parmesan. He loved it!

My pasta - it was rigatoni with shrimp in a saffron sauce. It was pretty good, but not my favorite meal of the trip. I think the waiters thought I was a camel that night. I guess the bus tour and heat dehydrated me, because I drank a good 2 liters of water all by myself at dinner! This was a restaurant where the waiters are very attentive and come fill your glass anytime it gets just a little bit low. Let's just say they were at our table quite a bit!

The next morning, our last day in Europe, we took a guided tour of the Roman Forum and Coliseum. We did this through a company called Through Eternity tours. I would highly recommend both the company and not trying to tour these sights by yourself. Our tour guide was able to give us so much information. Without her, it all would have just looked like a big pile of rocks!

After our tour, which took all morning, we walked over to the Piazza Navona for lunch and did some sightseeing on the way. We ate at Caffe Bernini, which overlooks the piazza. The food was really good and it was fun to people watch while we ate.

TMT's "pepperoni" pizza

My spaghetti carbonara - I'd love to learn to make this, but it is so unhealthy! I should probably just save it for special occasions at restaurants!

We bought a painting from this lady. I love to get artwork when we travel. There were lots of vendors in the piazza, but only this lady was selling original paintings. Several of them said that they had painted what they were selling, but I didn't believe them. This lady was obviously very proud of her artwork, and she was working on a new painting when we walked up. So I felt like she was the real deal!

We walked over to the Pantheon. Inside they were having mass with a wonderful choir. I love to listen to choirs and the accoustics in this church were fantastic. I did think it was pretty rude that there were tourists everywhere taking pictures and eating gelato while these people were having a church service. At one point, the priest even had to ask that people be quiet so that he could pray!

We went back to the hotel and rested for a little bit and then headed back out to find somewhere to eat dinner. We knew that we wanted to eat in the Campo de Fiori, so we just wandered around for a little while looking at all of the menus posted outside the restaurants. We chose one that looked a little touristy, but the food was good.

TMT had rigatoni al amatriciana.


I had penne alla vodka, which I loved!

After dinner we did the Rick Steve's walking tour from the Campo de Fiori to the Spanish Steps. Along the way, we saw this bride. Her wedding had just ended at the Pantheon. Everyone in the square was cheering and clapping for the bride and groom; it was so fun!

My last gelato! This is the most famous gelato place in Rome, so I had to hit it up before we left. It was actually really good gelato - a perfect way to end our vacation!

Our last stop of the night was at the Trevi Fountain. We asked some man to take our picture, and, as you can see, it really did not turn out at all. Behind us in this picture is the famous fountain. Oh well, it gives us a reason to return someday!

After spending the night (or a few hours) in Milan, we took a train to Florence. We decided to walk from the train station to our hotel because it didn’t look very far on the map. Let’s just say this was a bad idea. It ended up being about a thirty minute walk – we each had a big backpack and several shopping bags. By the time we got to the hotel, I was sweating more than I’d ever sweated in my life! The entire back of my shirt was completely soaked. We dropped our bags at the hotel and left for our cooking class – the thing I’d been looking forward to for the entire trip! We took a class from a lady named Stefania, who runs a company called Toscana in Bocaa, where she teaches classes out of her apartment in Florence or her parents’ home in Chianti. This is a picture of me and Stefania.

Here is what the table looked like when we arrived. Stefania had all of the ingredients laid out, and I could not wait to get started! In our class, we learned to make the following items: tomatoes stuffed with a mixture of ricotta, a cream cheese, and herbs; spinach and cheese gnudi; pear and talleggio cheese ravioli; pork tenderloin braised in milk, country potatoes, and an ice cream cake dessert.

Here I am mixing up the dessert. It was just ladyfingers soaked in run and then mixed into ricotta cheese with sugar and chopped dried fruit. You then freeze it for a couple of hours and it turns into something very similar to an ice cream cake.

The other lady in the picture was our classmate - Marilyn from California. She knew a lot about cooking, and it was fun to visit with her. She was definitely a talker!

Our next job was to cook the pears for the ravioli filling with some butter. I’d never cooked on a gas stove before, so this was a new experience!

After this, we got the pork ready to cook. We cut slits in it and stuffed them with sliced garlic, rubbed the whole pork loin in salt and pepper, and tied it up with twine. Then it went into a Dutch oven to be browned. After about twenty minutes of browning, we added milk and let it cook for about an hour.

By this time, we were getting hungry, so we finished up our cheese-stuffed tomato appetizer. TMT even got into the action.

Here is the only picture of both of us from the cooking class. At the bottom of the picture, you can see the platter of our tomatoes. These were so good, due mostly to the fact that Stefania’s dad grew the tomatoes himself. In fact, that is one thing that really impressed me about this class. Stefania got all of the food at the local market, and it was all so fresh. Very different from what we can get in the produce department at Wal-Mart! I mean I love Wal-Mart, but there are times when I would just like to be able to get a carrot that looks like it came out of the ground that same day!

Finally, we were ready for the part of the class I’d been anxiously awaiting – learning to make fresh pasta. I got more compliments on my skills here - for those of you who know me, you know that this made my day! I loved making the pasta and filling the ravioli.

The finished products!

This is gnudi - basically the inside of a cheese and spinach ravioli cooked without the noodle. Gnudi means naked, so these are “naked ravioli.” This was not my fave, but it is a good way to eat your spinach!

Here is the masterpiece of the mean – the pear ravioli. My friend Kristi had eaten this mean when she was in Tuscany earlier in the summer and raved about it, so I requested that Stefania teach us to make it. Kristi, Erin P., and I made it once I got back, and she says it’s just like she remembers.

This was our secondi or second course – pork loin and potatoes. I didn’t get any pictures of us making the potatoes, but they were really good. They had carrots, celery, onion, hot peppers, and tomatoes. All of the veggies came together to make a little sauce for the potatoes. The pork was also excellent. I usually don’t like pork that much, but this was the moistest pork I’ve ever eaten. I’ve also made this since I’ve been home, and it was just as easy to recreate in America as it was to make in Italy!

Despite eating a huge lunch, I could not pass up gelato. I’d heard that Florence had the best gelato, and we went to Vivoli, which was supposedly the best in Florence – so the best of the best! It was pretty good! And by the way, although I’m double-fisting the gelato in this picture, I didn’t actually eat both of them. Once was TMT’s; the store was super crowded and TMT doesn’t do well in tight spaces. I let him wait outside and I just brought his gelato to him.

Before dinner we did a little shopping at the market. We had not bought many of the gifts we needed to bring back and had only two days left in Rome, so I was feeling the pressure to start taking care of gifts. Most of what was for sale in the market was just junk! I did get a new shawl to replace the one I lost in our move from one train car to another during our ride from Villefranche to Milan.

We ate dinner at Trattoria ZaZa, which I first visited eight years ago with my best friend Kayla. I’ve recommended this to several people, and every one loves it. It was just as good as I remembered. My meal this night was comment and picture worthy because it had a truffle sauce. I had never had anything with truffles before, but had heard they are wonderful, so I tried the fettuccine with truffle sauce. It was good, but not as spectacular as I expected.

Our last stop in Florence before heading back to our hotel for the night was Il Porcino. We have a replica of this at the U of A, and there is also one in Kansas City. We may have missed two football games while we were on vacation, but we kept the Razorback spirit alive in Florence!

Casinos, Yachts, and Princess Grace - Can You Guess Where We Are?

We took the train from Villefranche to Monaco for the day. Monaco was not my favorite stop on our trip, but I’m glad we went once. It was very commercialized and expensive. However, it was very pretty. We first walked from the train station down to the harbor to look at all of the fancy boats.

Here is TMT with some of the big boats.


Monaco is built on a mountain, so we headed up the hill to see the casino. This is a park right across from the casino. TMT took this picture, and he’s pretty proud of it!

This is the Monte-Carlo casino. It has a very strict dress code, which we definitely did not meet, so this is all we saw of it!

Il Terrazzino – With this restaurant recommendation, the Amateur Gourmet completely redeemed himself. He rates this as the best meal he’s ever eaten, and while I might not go that far, it was excellent. This was really the main reason for our little day trip to Monaco. We got a fixed price menu with the pasta of the day. There was a slight misunderstanding here – when the Amateur Gourmet ate here, he got multiple items with each course. That’s what we thought we were getting. However, what we ordered ended up only including one item per course. So, I was a little disappointed, but the food was still great!

We started with an appetizer of bruschetta. This was probably the best bruschetta I’ve ever eaten. The tomatoes were wonderful – even better than Arkansas tomatoes – and the olive oil and bread were excellent too.

Our next course was this antipasti platter. It also was excellent; I would like to learn to make vegetables like they did at Il Terrazzino. I can’t even name most of what’s on this plate, but I know there was cabbage and carrots, tomatoes, potatoes, and fresh ricotta cheese, along with a slice of frittata.

This penne with tomato cream sauce was also very good. Although it was pretty basic, I loved it because I could identify it! This is where the biggest disappointment (and most embarrassing moment of the meal) came into play. They serve you from a large family-style platter. As he was putting pasta on my plate, I told him to stop at the point you see above because “I wanted to save room for all of the other choices” I knew were coming. However, this ended up being it for the main course. I’m sure the waiter was thinking “What is this crazy American girl talking about?” We didn’t figure it out until they came to clear our plates and didn’t bring any more pasta choices!

To get over our disappointment about the lack of pasta choices, we ordered a cheese plate, including a blue cheese, a cheese called cavallo, and Parmesan. Our favorite was the cavallo, which is the one at the top of the plate.

Here we are sitting at our table at the restaurant. Isn’t it colorful?! After lunch, we headed back to Villefranche to collect our luggage and then go back to the train station to catch our train to Milan, via Nice.

Here is TMT on the train ride that ended up being the worst train ride on our entire trip! The Nice train station had no food, except for some suspicious-looking sandwiches. Due to the lack of refrigeration, I opted to skip the sandwich, thinking I’d get something on the train. When we got on the train, we were squished in – every seat was full. The electricity in our train car kept going out, so we rode for large portions of the trip with no lights and no air conditioning. Eventually, the train man came back through and told us that we needed to move to another train car. We were supposed to do this in the dark. Let’s just say that it was quite an ordeal to gather up our luggage from the rack in the middle of the car, and all of the stuff we’d scattered all over our seating area, and then move through several train cars in the dark! Also, the train somehow got delayed by over an hour. We never thought we’d be so glad to arrive in Milan for our five hours of sleep!

A Day at the Beach

We took this picture on our hotel balcony right after we arrived in Villefranche. Looking a little tired!

In Villefranche, we stayed at the Hotel Welcome. Although it wasn't fancy, it was the nicest hotel in Villefranche. It was clean and right on the waterfront, so it worked for us. Here is the view from our balcony.

We spent the day at a private beach, Plage Passable. In Villefranche, there is a public beach and then there is Plage Passable. Plage Passable is sort of a beach club; they have chairs and umbrellas you can rent for only $40 per person and a restaurant. It is located across the bay from Hotel Welcome, so they send a boat to pick you up at the hotel's dock. We got some great pictures during our boat rides to and from the beach.

Here is the view from our beach chairs. I definitely enjoyed the chairs and umbrella. I slept for pretty much the entire day, and I can't tell you how good it felt!

Around lunchtime, it started sprinkling, so we headed up to the restaurant for some pizza.

The first of many Caprese salads. This is one of my favorites, and I never thought I would get tired of it. However, it showed up on so many menus in Italy that I finally started skipping it.
Me with our Pizza Margharita.

We love Villefranche, and we would go back in a heartbeat!

For dinner, we decided to eat at Le Cosmo. We spent ten minutes walking the waterfront and checking out all of the menus posted in front of restaurants, and we definitely felt like we made a good choice.

To start, we ordered a marinated vegetable salad to split. This is not exactly what I was expecting, but doesn't it look incredible? I really want to figure out how to recreate this, because it might be the best vegetables I've ever eaten!

TMT's lasagna - he was so excited to find regular Italian food at last!

My cheese ravioli - I was also super excited to find regular Italian food.

Le Cosmo was fantastic. I would highly recommend it if you ever find yourself in Villefranche.

Paris - Take Two

On our second day in Paris, we decided to take it a bit more slowly. We started with breakfast at Laduree on the Champs Elyees, where we had an assortment of pastries - plain croissants, filled croissants (chocolate and fruit), sugared brioche, and a cinnamon currant bun - butter and jam, and yummy coffee. Laduree is a very dignified patisserie, and I didn't think anyone there would appreciate me whipping out the camera to take pictures of my food, so you'll just have to use your imaginations to picture my lovely breakfast. I also bought a box of Parisian macarons to eat on our train ride later that day. The boxes at Laduree are so pretty that I saved it and brought it home with me. I'm trying to think of some way to use it in my house - maybe I'll frame it and hang it somewhere. I just love Parisian macarons - they are like two meringue cookies put together with filling in the middle. I bought chocolate and raspberry. The chocolate were definitely better!

After leaving Laduree, we walked down the Champs Elysees for a little while. It was relatively peaceful at that time of day, and I was able to get this picture of TMT with the Arc de Triomphe in the background. He was excited to have some evidence that we did more than eat in Paris.

After breakfast, we headed off to do some major shopping. I was dying to go to Longchamp. My mom and sister brought me back a bag from Longchamp when they went to Paris last summer, and I wanted to see about getting another bag in a larger size. I felt that my navigation skills, which had been severely challenged the day before, were vindicated because we found Longchamp on our first try. I did some shopping and had my first experience with VAT refund. This is a fantastic deal! I kept telling TMT what great deals I was getting because I would get a 20% refund on whatever I bought. The only catch was that I had to spend a certain amount of money, which was fairly substantial, in each store, which wasn't too hard for me! After Longchamp, we visited a string of stores recommended in my Chic Shopping Paris book. I don't know what the lady who wrote the book was smoking, but every store she included was ridiculously expensive. I was prepared to spend some money on this trip, in fact I only asked for money for my birthday so that I could shop in Europe, but this was just beyond what I had imagined. I had fun poking through a store that carries only antique silver and a store that sells vintage jewelry, but I could not justify purchases at these stores. I did make a return trip to a store, 78, that I had spotted the day before when we walked through the Ile St. Louis. I had purchased a dress and some gifts from 78, and I spotted a very cute and stylish leather jacket there. I decided to wait on purchasing it and return before we left Paris if I was still thinking about the jacket. Well, you know it - when our second day in Paris rolled around, I was still thinking about that jacket. I love it, and I have already gotten a ton of wear out of it! After this major purchase, I was ready for some lunch. I spotted a restaurant that the Amateur Goumet had recommended, and we decided to give him a chance to redeem himself after our fiasco at Chez Omar the night before.

This is Le Petit Plateau. It doens't look like much, but we got the best deal there! For 11 euros each, we got a lunch special of quiche, salad, cheese plate, and wine or Coke. Maybe I was just hungry, but I thought it was excellent. Here are some photos of our food.

Notice the bread basket on the table. We sat at a little sidewalk table, and while we were eating, this homeless lady just came right up to the table and took our bread. She just laughed and laughed as she was doing it, and we just let her have it. She left us a few pieces, but those of you who know TMT know that he did not touch any of the bread that she left!

While we were eating lunch, we saw a real-life fashion shoot. I, of course being a celeb junkie, just pulled out the camera and started taking pictures of the super-cute male model. I have no idea who he was, but the fact that he was participating in a photo shoot for what I imagine, based on the clothes, was a major fashion designer was enough for me. These pictures aren't great, but the photographer and stylists kept getting in the way!

TMT and I enjoying our lunch.

After lunch, we hit a few more stores. Sabre had lots of reasonably priced, cute dishes and silverware, but I didn't really need anything they had. We did go to the retail store for the oldest candle manufacturer in Europe. They had the most beautiful display of taper candles. I know that sounds weird, but I could have looked at all of colors for hours. Of course, I'm the kid who was thrilled to death with the box of 64 crayons! We brought back a fancy candle for Grandma.

That evening, we caught a train for Nice, on the French Riviera. We were actually staying in Villefranche Sur Mer, but the closest train went to Nice. On the train, we ate a picnic dinner of baguette sandwiches, chips, Cokes, and of course, our Laduree macarons. After riding backwards on this train trip, TMT decided that he wasn't such a fan of train travel!