Italy honeymoon!! Where else would you go??

We just came back from our wonderful honeymoon in Italy. Never have we had so good food and wine every day all day long, it was heaven!

Now where to begin? Let’s start in Venice where we practiced getting lost in the many alleys and canals, only to come across an amazing little restaurant or cafe where we enjoyed delicious pizza, pasta, coffee, wine and baked goods. Does it get any better than this?

Here are some of our favourites from Venice:

We will definitely be making some of these dishes in the near future!

Now moving on to Cinque Terre, more specifically Manarola on the Italian Riviera on the West coast. Beautiful, gorgeous and magnificent scenery! Just take a look here.

The atmosphere in Manarola was much more low key than Venice which is very touristy. We found a great breakfast place that had the best chocolate croissants, foccacia bread with olives and tomatoes, great coffee and a yummy chocolate muffin. Probably not the healthiest breakfast, but it tasted soooo good, and we enjoyed eating it on our patio with a full ocean view.

We also visited a restaurant who had been nominated by Michelin three years in a row. It was surprisingly not expensive and the food had to be great to get a nomination, and it was. This is where Bob had his favourite dish of the entire trip: Squid-ink pasta with seafood!

Wait a minute, I think we forgot to talk about tiramisu….
Well, being in Italy it is mandatory to eat tiramisu at least once in every new location you go, just so you can compare. So we did, and possibly a bit more than that too 🙂
Tiramisu is the loveliest dessert and great to share with the one you love, gazing out at the ocean and the bright red, orange and pink sky from a beautiful sunset.
So yes, it did get better than Venice!

Eating bread dipped in olive oil and balsamic vinegar is the pre-starter for any Italian lunch or dinner. The whole eating experience is much more relaxed and enjoyable because it takes time to eat good food and really taste it and sometimes we would eat for about 2 hours or more. The quality of the food is great and even a simple dish, if you can even call it a dish, as the bread with oil and vinegar is just heavenly.

Bread, cheese, olives, cured meats and a good bottle of wine pared with patio, sunset, stillness and romance! There is nothing more to say.

Wine tasting in Montaione, Tuscany was fun and interesting. We found ourselves in the small town of Montaione where the only way to get around is by car, which we didn’t have, or rely on the occasional bus that departed twice a day or something like that. Definitely a challenge going anywhere but it also made it fun and boosted our creativity. We found a tiny wine tasting store fairly close to town and decided to walk there one afternoon. It was only open three hours a day and happened to be closed when we arrived, so we had to come back some other day. This time we planned our trip so it just fitted with the bus schedule. We didn’t really plan on buying more than one bottle since we had to check it in with our suitcase, but it turned out that the tasting of the wines were free, so we felt obligated to buy more than one 4 Euro wine bottle. It was a nice and cosy place and we got good service, so we ended up buying three bottles of good wine and one bottle of olive oil. And all of it made it home safely, phew!!

Now we are inspired and excited to get started on some Italian cooking, so keep your eyes open for some more posts about our Italian adventures.

-Enjoy!

Ayoe and Bob