I have made a Florence google map guide to my favorite places and picks for accomodations, shopping, restaurants and wine bars in Florence along with extensive notes for each marker and some suggestions for what to pair the stop with. I hope you’ll find it useful!

I can’t remember who it was, but someone was talking to me about how effortlessly the French will whip up a souffle for dinner, something on par with opening a can of soup or mixing rice a roni in an American household.
I do love a good souffle, and while I’ve been more partial to Alton [...]

Updates have been slow lately, despite that I’ve been cooking lots of super-fresh pasta primavera, pestos, grilling, and making fresh lemonade just about every day. I’ve been traveling, and there’s more ahead.
I took a trip to the south and ate, and ate, and ate. I only managed to grab pictures of the last day, so [...]

I have crazy stories about being stranded in Italy, spending an unplanned night in Rome, eating fried chicken in Georgia, getting back to San Francisco and more but mostly I left 10 kilos in Italy. Yep. You can have them, Italy. Send them to the south.

Something sharp is LODGED in my foot after several days at the beach in Levanto. Yesterday the surf was really rough (2nd day of red flag) and i took a beating along the rocky sea floor and as I came out must have hit a sharp rock or a peice of glass or something that [...]

I had a wonderful weekend via smart car in less traveled Italy only to have my purse and everything possibly very valuable to me inside it at the time on the bus ride from the car drop off to my apartment. Mostly I was in Castagnetto Carducci and Bolgheri, but hit San Gimignano and others [...]

Last weekend I took a trip to Cinque Terre and spent a few hours on the way in Pisa (quite underwhelming). Cinque Terre is right up there with Big Sur for favorite places ever and because of its accessibility and the presence of cheap eats and fresh seafood, I might even like it better than [...]

Some moments since I’ve been here, all within Florence as I’ve written seperate entries about trips.

I’ve had two weeks of classes at Apicius now and will leave you with some pictures of what I’ve cooked.

This is overdue. Two weekends ago I visited Siena. I found it to be small and the food to be overpriced and under-quality, but the shoe and pastry shopping was good and the historical architecture was quite interesting and refreshing after the bustle and endless streets in Florence.