When in Florence.... Try anything!

Last night, I added the class History and Culture of Italian Food.  It meets Monday and Wednesday nights and I have a few friends in the class.  All I can say is that class is easily one of the better decisions of the semester thus far.  I couldn't have signed up at a better time because today, the class started off by the professor pointing out some good gelato and panini spots, taking us inside some restaurants, telling us about some of the city history with food, and then a chocolate tasting.  We went inside Vestri, which has officially changed my life as far as chocolate is concerned.  Please if you are EVER in Florence, go here! We tasted chocolate covered hazelnuts, orange flavored chocolates (one made with Sicilian oranges and another with an orange liqueur), a truffle with crushed hazelnuts, a milk chocolate with local crushed Almonds, chili pepper chocolate, as well as some of their hot chocolate that had chili powder and cinnamon in it. It was all to die for.  Let's just say I know exactly where I will be going on Valentine's Day!  After the delectable chocolate tasting, we stopped by a street vendor, who sold tripe along with many other types of sandwiches and dishes.  This sort of place is called a "trippai".  He was nice enough to let us all try tripe and two of the other specialty dishes he sold there.  Never once did I EVER in a million years thing I would try tripe.  I remember my dad ordering it whenever possible or cooking it at our house and making the whole place smell like armpit or something.  Luckily it came in a nice red sauce and plenty of bread to go with it because the texture of that was absolutely foul!  Then we got to try the Lampredotto, which is the lining of the cow's 4th stomach, and someone thought it would be hilarious to tell us it was the colon of the cow as we were chewing it.  Luckily it too was covered in a good sauce, had a slightly better texture, came with a lot of bread, and we were also given free wine to accompany it.  The 3rd dish we had was more just meat and it came in a sauce with parsley and lots of salt that tasted like it belonged on seafood.  That was actually really tasty and would probably be the only thing I would come back there for.

Needless to say, today was a day of firsts and I am so glad I jumped into the class and the experiences it provided.  When in Florence...