Food Fashion and Fun Part 3

On Friday we slept in and then spent the entire day shopping. That's right, the entire day. We went to an early Aperitivo at La Cite which is a library/cafe. They have a sign up that says that "This is a library, there should be no solitary studying but instead loud social interaction", so its that kind of place (I'm paraphrasing here, btw). A couple of NYU students jam there on Thursday or Friday nights with Florentine musicians so it's a really eclectic crowd in a really creative environment. After jazz we went to Santo Bevitore for dinner, one of our favorite restaurants in Firenze,  I had a DELICIOUS extremely spicy sausage pasta. Then we went home early to go to bed! 

Saturday (yesterday morning!) we woke up at 6 and hopped a train all the way up to La Spezia, which is near Genova. Cinque Terre is a group of 5 hill towns connected by hiking trails (8 miles in total) right on the coast. The towns are all built into the mountains and they are painted the most beautiful pinks and yellows. We got into Monterosso (the first town) and walked around a bit. It is the most resort like of all of the towns, so we tasted some pesto (delicious) and got some focaccia and this crazy milky pinenutty hazelnutty cookie thing from a place that was recommended to me. It was very weird, but still very tasty. A little too oily though. Then we took the ferry to Vernazza, the most beautiful of the towns. We climbed up this tower and saw a beautiful view of the ocean, the mountains, and the town. Then we sat down for lunch. Now, we knew we had to go heavy on the seafood, but we had no idea what we were in for. We started with a wine, Vermentino, created by a female producer who makes a tiny amount of wine only for this restaurant. We were sitting outside at a table in the Piazza and the gentleman who was our waiter pointed up to a vineyardup the hill from us, which is the exact vineyard where our wine was grown. It was so cool to sit there and drink it and look at where it came from. So we ordered octopus with potatoes and mussels. The octopus was amazing, not rubbery at all. It was so fresh that the texture was just soft and it was interesting with the potatoes, the flavor was great! The mussels were the best mussels of my entire life. They were bright orange and they came with two lemons on the plate that were literally plucked from the tree in the same town. Ridiculous. Next we had trofie with Pesto. Ok. Pesto. Pesto was created in Genova, and now I know why. This pesto was SO fresh!!!!! The pasta was cooked perfectly, the right amount of chewyness and cheese and we scarfed. I'm telling you, Pesto is ruined for me, forever.