Italy 2025

Travel day SFO > Rome.

Toured the Vatican

We woke up at a reasonable time, and debated going to either the Spanish Steps or St. Peter’s Bascilica. We lamented not going to St. Peter’s when we were already in the Vatican, and leaned towards the Spanish Steps. Upon checking the news and learning that the Pope had died overnight, that solidified it. We got out around 10:30 and grabbed coffee and pastries from the cafe around the corner. Honestly, it was the best coffee we’d had since arriving here. Katie had a cornetto (basically a croissant) and I got a maritozzo (a whipped cream filled brioche). Maritozzi are excellent, and pretty much exactly what you’d expect. After, we wandered towards the Spanish Steps. They’re pretty! So that was cool. We got lunch at CiPasso (which had only Asian customers for about half the time we were there—wonder if that’s the internet playing tricks on people or just chance).

After lunch, we went back to the hotel before meeting up with Katie’s coworker. Got gelato, then sat out in Piazza Navona. Back to the hotel, then dinner at Retro Bottega. The whole schtick being that the restaurant is retro and like dining in the early 2000s. Air Jordans were an a case next to Jordan’s Wings poster, music was Zero 7, plating to match. The food though was still really good. We had:

• Artichoke Katsusando: Panko fried artichoke hearts with cheese, garlic, mayo and mint. Sort of like a grilled cheese sandwich and excellent
• Green spaghetti : puréed green garlic and chili for sauce over spaghetti. Nice and spicy from the garlic.
• Fried broccoli rabe: Broccoli rabe tempura with a citrus seaweed sauce. Really tasty.
• Asparagus: asparagus, broad beans, and an olive purée. Also really tasty.
• Chicory and shallots: pretty much what you’d expect
• Bunet Branco: Similar to a panna cotta served covered in thinly sliced strawberries and caramel sauce.

For wine, we had

• La Zerba Sante Il Bandito 2022: a natural white
• Markus Scholtes Mosel Riesling 2023
• Massimo Abbate Musa 2023: Moscato and Sauvignon blanc that worked really well as a drier dessert wine
• Manni Nossing Gruner Veltliner 2023:

Post dinner, we went straight to bed.

We woke up, took it pretty slow, and made it to the station around noon. We grabbed coffee and sandwiches from Paul, then got on the train. The train was delayed five minutes and still arrived early, which didn’t even leave us enought time to finish Saturday Night. Once we arrived, we got settled, had dinner at the hotel, and went to bed.

We got up and took the 11:30 shuttle down to the city. We intended to grab a quick coffee from Riviore, but it turned out that Katie’s coworkers were staying just a few doors down, so they dropped by and we had a nice few rounds! After, we wandered around, eventually crossing over the Ponte Vecchio and back, before getting sandwiches. We hung out for a while at their Airbnb, then went to the Galileo museum. It’s wild how much effort humans have put into just measuring time. Some of the other surveying tools were also really cool and seriously strained my high school geometry.

We walked up to a hill overlooking the city, and hung out in the fading sunlight for a while. We then crossed back over the river into the city center and found a bunch of art galleries. There was some fun stuff (including a clock-like piece where the face/hands were two human bodies that changed positions depending on the orientation that was pretty funny), but nothing we had to take home.

Post galleries, we walked around, found a wine window, walked through a little pop up market, and then dinner at Cibreo Caffe.

We woke up and got breakfast at the hotel. We sat out on a table that overlooked the entire city. After breakfast, we got massages, then relaxed until it was time to tour the Duomo. It was cool seeing the ~thousand years of history of this one place, repeatedly expanded, rebuilt.

Post museums, we got coffee, some gelato, and then met up with Chris and Ivee. We grabbed dinner at a steak house, and then went to bed.

We woke up around 6, packed up and checked out, then taxi’d over to the Airbnb. We dropped our bags, and walked over to get coffee from BEN Caffe on our way to the Vespa scooter tour meetup.

Scooting around was of course super fun, and had some incredible views. We had a really simple, tasty lunch at a farm, then headed back. Katie and I took a nap. Several hours later, we woke up and rallied, grabbing dinner at Club culinario toscano da Osvaldo. We had:

• Artichoke and Parmesan salad
• Breaded and fried beef meatballs
• Tortello filled with potatoes in a mushroom ragu
• Ravioli en brodo
• Spaghetti in a bolognese
• Tortellini filled with cheese The mushroom was only ok, but everything else was absolutely top notch. In particular the fried meatballs were incredibly tasty.

Woke up, got coffee, then spent the day wandering around. We got coffee at Rivarno, then grabbed sandwiches from Retrobottega. Katie grabbed drinks from the market, and we took it all back to the Airbnb. After lunch, we walked over the Ponte Vecchio. Got coffee, canoli, and other sweets, then sat out for a bit. We then wandered up past the Duomo. We then went to the Central Market, hit up the Lego store, then back to the Airbnb for a nap.

After we woke up from an incredible nap, we headed to a cooking class, taught by Thomas…, where we made a few different pasta dishes

• Agnolotti in an Oslo buco ragu
• Spaghetti in an olive oil, Calabrian chili, dill, and lime sauce
• Capaletti in an brown butter sage sauce

The class ended up going almost four hours and was a great time. On our way back, we stopped at RivaReno for gelato.

We got up and out, grabbing coffee again at BEN cafe, which sits in the courtyard in front of some dude’s house. After that, we wandered around a bit, eventually getting pizza at Il Pizzar…., on the recommendation of Thomas.

• Burrata with tomatoes
• Really tasty bread
• Spicy salami with black olives, mozzerella, and tomato sauce
• Margherita
• Porcini with mozzerela and onion

Everything was great, with the spicy salami pizza being the best! We grabbed one last gelato at RivaReno (I had Crema buontalenti, which I found out after my first taste is that classic gelato flavor, honey, lemon, and orange). After that, we meandered back to the Airbnb, packed up, and said our goodbyes to Ivee and Chris. They headed out to the Uffizi Muesum and we headed to the train station.

The train ride was mostly uneventful, but we got off a stop or two early, ending up in the outskirts of Milan rather than the city center. It took us a little bit to navigate the differences between the commuter rail, subway, etc. but eventually we got it sorted.

We got dinner at La Società Milano

• We started with an apparativo, with sparkling white wine, a lamb meatball, an egg roll, and octopus ceviche
• An amuse bouche consisting of a “deconstructed pizza” aka burrata with with tomato shavings. Whatever you wanna call it, it was tasty.
• Beef carpacio for a starter
• Foie gras
• Hand cut penne, with each piece longer than a finger
• Celeriac with mushroom and shiitake dashi broth (it was two small cubes of celeriac, two button mushrooms, and some sauce). Also, it had a weird coffee reduction, that I really didn’t think worked with everything else, but everything else was great so whatever.

Even though what I had for a main was tiny and clearly not intended to be one, with all the other food it was perfect. We skipped dessert and got a car to the hotel, then got to bed as quickly as we could

Got up at 4:30am, flew to Zurich on Ethiopian. Killed a bunch of time at the airport in Zurich, then few to SFO.