Day 15: Thursday August 5th, 2004 Read Short Version View Photos

Short Version Instructions: Only read every other paragraph.

We had not made plans for the day, so we eventually woke up long enough to have breakfast, then went back to sleep until nearly one. We summoned Jessie and went to lunch at a restaurant across from the Ponte Vecchio that Jessie and I had spied the previous night. I had salami and cheese followed by lasagna, Bekki had bruschetta and cannelloni, and Jessie had caprice and cannelloni. We then shopped for about an hour until thunder heralded a rainstorm that sent everyone running for cover. We eventually made it back to the hotel where we napped for another few hours.

Thumbs Up: The White Boar We decided on 7:30 for dinner and crossed the Arno River towards a restaurant recommended by the woman at the front desk. We found it and checked the menu, then decided to check the restaurant just down the street, found that menu to be better, and went in. The name translated to "the white boar" and not surprisingly featured a lot of boar. I had spaghetti with meat sauce and a steak with parmesian and arugala, Bekki had onion soup, spinach and ricotta dumplings and a boar stew with polenta, Jessie had caprice (for the seventy third time this trip) and pork, and Alan had the onion soup, garlic bread and "osso buco," topped off with a nice chiante. For dessert I had strawberries in mascarpone, Bekki and Alan had the mixed dessert, which included tiramisu, chocolate cake, cookies and mascarpone, and Jessie got tiramisu. This was definitely a top three meal of the trip.

We left the restaurant and headed back over the Ponte Vecchio, past some vigilante neighborhood watch cops, took some pictures and went back to the hotel. We packed our stuff for our departure to Bari the next day then went to bed.