It’s been a minute! I am officially back from my honeymoon with a very full belly and… a very broken foot. More on that in a minute. I hope you enjoyed the takeovers while you were away, I am so grateful to all the ladies for supporting you all! I’ve got some new recipes coming soon, but I just couldn’t wait to tell you about the trip ❤️
Despite the slightly disastrous ending, we had the most magical two weeks. As two people who work a loooooooooot, it was so nice to have absolutely no responsibilities aside from where to eat next and what train to catch.
We’d planned for three weeks — one each in Florence, Rome and Amalfi Coast — but obviously had to cut things a little short, no Amalfi. So we’ve decided we’ll just have to go back next year and finish what we started. Not a bad compromise.
Our days mostly went: breakfast + cappuccino - fuel for our daily 20K steps, lunch which was pretty much always a giant sandwich, most days we’d do gelato, a lot of shopping and sightseeing, a cheeky aperitivo, back to the hotel to get ready, then tie the whole thing up with a bow and a feast for dinner.
So ya. We did a lot of eating.
We did all the usual suspects like David, the Vatican, you know them, you’ve heard of them, I don’t need to tell you.
But the highlight for me was hands down our truffle hunting day.
We were picked up by our guide Gianluca, dogs in tow, and driven out to his house on a beautiful property with chickens, a produce garden and olive trees. Right behind was the forest, where his dogs Pesca and Chef gleefully got straight to work finding a ridiculous amount of truffles (like 12 I think).
Back to his house, he poured us some VERY strong, VERY delicious, unlabeled Italian wine on the sunny patio while we made pasta from scratch with “as much truffle as you like.” Say less.
Kyle had such a good time he even agreed to make pasta with me when we got home.
Gianluca was hosting a supper club that night, so while we ate lunch in his kitchen, he was buzzing around prepping the dinner around us, grabbing produce from his garden and eggs from his chickens, simmering stock on the stove, truffles everywhere. It felt like we were briefly living my Italian dream. 10/10 recommend.
Beyond the truffle hunting, I have SO many stories and so much good food to rave but I’ll tell you what you’re probably most curious about…
My broken foot.
Everyone warned me before Italy: bring proper shoes. The roads suck, you’re going to walk a million miles. SO I DID, I bought new runners and sandals just for this trip, your girl was PREPARED.
It’s our last night in Florence, we had walked about 40 minutes from our hotel and climbed like 100 cobblestone steps to watch the sunset before dinner. It was incredible, there was a random concert happening, a just married bride and groom crashed it, and the steps were packed with people drinking spritzes and bottles of champagne - absolutely buzzing and dreamy!
On our way out, walking down the cobblestone steps in a giant stream of people, IN MY RESPONSIBLE WALKING SANDALS, my left foot hit the ground at the wrong angle and folded underneath my ankle and I nearly ate shit.
We hobbled the rest of the way down, found a bench and I immediately thought I had broken it.
It was swollen, bruised and very painful. Eventually we managed to find a ride home, and an hour later we were in bed eating pizza while I iced my ankle. A very romantic last night in Florence.
But! Over the next couple of days it started feeling significantly better. I could walk on it. The swelling went down. And soon enough we were back on our BS, doing 20K steps a day.
CUT TO: THE FOLLOWING WEEK. AGAIN WITH THE SUNSETS. (Curse Kyle for being a sunset chaser.)
We’d had the dreamiest picnic: meats, cheese, bread, fresh figs and the best tomatoes I have ever eaten all from a local market. All at the top of another hill watching the sun set over Rome.
Again, as we leave we walk down the stairs, VERY carefully this time, the FINAL STEP - BOOM. THE EXACT SAME THING HAPPENS TO THE OTHER FOOT. Except this time it’s baaaaaad. Immediately black and blue, bulging, cannot put any weight on it. I am not going anywhere.
We call an Uber, which in Italy seems to come with precisely zero patience or empathy for actually waiting for its customers. We missed a couple even with a strong limp.
Eventually we make it back to the Airbnb. My foot is enormous, but I figure let’s wait until tomorrow. The other one was better the next day.
But it wasn’t … so off we went to a private clinic. THANK GOD for travel insurance because we’d heard the ER wait was around 12 hours.
3 hours, an X-ray and an ortho later: broken 5th metatarsal. Boot cast, crutches, no weight bearing, foot elevated above my heart as much as possible. And, for a little extra razzle dazzle, injectable blood thinners. There goes my Italian wine (although funny enough the Italian Dr told me “OOO wine?? 3, 4 glasses it’s okaiii” but a quick google search told me otherwise).
Now, if you’ve been here for a while, you may remember that I am unfortunately no stranger to crutches thanks to fracturing my hip TWICE. So I figured it’s fine I can hobble around Rome. However the Dr had given me arm crutches and as someone with apprx. zero upper-body strength, paired with cobblestones and thousands of other people also on vacation who absolutely will not be waiting for you to crutch your ass out of their way… I knew the trip was over.
So I chilled at the Airbnb while Kyle (BLESS) dealt with travel insurance and got our flights home sorted (a story for another day). I forced him out to see a few of the sights I couldn’t make it to, and to run around Rome collecting as many souvenirs as possible. And we did as much as we could in the last 2 days that was within a 3 minute radius of our Airbnb.
After a very long very chaotic trip home, we decided not to immediately snap out of the honeymoon bubble. We kept up our morning cappuccino runs, continued romancing our days, but now with Reggie in tow ❤️ and gave ourselves a few days to deal with the jet lag (and not deal with life).
But I cannot tell you how excited I am to be back.
My brain is currently overflowing with about a million fall and holiday recipe ideas and, frankly, I MISSED Y’ALL.
But don’t be shy - if you have questions about Italy, the broken foot or anything, you know I’m an open book.
PS. I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface of our trip, so if you want my food or shopping rundown let me know and I’ll keep sharing more!
See you soon for dinner!
I'm so sorry to hear about your foot. It looks like you had a great time, up until that happened. We're going to Rome soon and I would love to know the restaurants, gelato and street food shops that you would recommend. I can't wait to read more about your trip and see your new recipes!
Oh my gosh…still sounds like a whole lotta wonderful!!!