Breakfast at the hotel before a stroll at Florence's wet market and leather market

 I do wish that I get to have breakfast like this everyday. I love granola cereal and yoghurt, and the combination of both together is awesome! Coffee was bad though. I quietly stole a few more chocolate spread, which serve as my breakfast spread on some lazy mornings now, back at home.

 The moment I stepped into the main entrance of the market, this was the view. Wine, and ham, and salami, and pasta, and the list goes on. The rush of excitement immediately gushed in. I am guilty of not being like a real girl. Girls get the adrenaline rush when they walk into the shoppers' street with all kinds of luxury goods. I get excited over the display of delicious food.

 At the yummy wummy ham hung on the top, while fresh blocks of different types of cheese were displayed in the cooling counter. I wanted to just buy everything from here and bring it back home in my 20 kg luggage bag. Sigh.

 If our wet markets looked as fresh and as good and as CLEAN as this, I wouldn't mind marketing everyday rather than buying from frozen food from the major hypermarts. Fresh meat can be obtained in those pasar pagi and wet markets, but not convenient for me in terms of location, timing and.. most importantly, cleanliness! The smelly water puddles on the ground and leftover unwanted perishables thrown all over the place deters me from buying groceries at the wet market. The view of a pasar pagi when food stallers are wrapping up is always horrific. Rubbish everywhere, smelly. 

Locals just popped by this bakery and have a cuppa coffee standing by the counter while having a sweet or savoury pastry from the display below. In a 10 degree weather. This is life man!

Guibbe Rosse@Piazza Della Republica, Florence

 Florence is a beautiful place. Love the scenery, the people, the ambience, the atmosphere. It was a slightly gloomy day in Florence, little drizzles and showers throughout making walking around slightly difficult. As it was our final night in Italy, we decided to splurge on a good meal. When we found some free wifi, we did a quicksearch and it seemed that this was a good place for a good meal.

 Home brewed beer. EURO 4. Very, good, fizzy, floral, yeasty beer. One of the better beers I drank in Italy. BUT.....

 Check out the size. This was their 1/2 pint. SO TINY. Unlike the other EURO 3/4 worth pint beers i drank which was at least 330 c. Pricey, phew. Lucky it was good.

 The only thing I dislike about the appetizer bread served in Italy. Besides charging you for the bread (unlike in Msia, all bread free flow) about EURO 2, they are usually cold and hard, and no olive oil and balsamic vinegar is served unless asked. With such hardened and cold bread, its unlikely to swallow it down without any dipping sauce. The only place which we had lightly toasted appetizer bread was in Siena, and boy we were so happy!

 This pizza.... WOO LALA. Was oh so good. Extremely authentic, and the salami i must say, very flavourful and spicy. They were very generous with the cheese toppings. Every slice we pulled out, had the 'Pizza Hut commercial" stringy cheese effect (when you order a real pizza from PH, chances are you will not get that stringy effect). Thin crunchy crusted. Yums. EURO 9.

 My colleague, a "Fan Thung" (Rice Barrel, literal translation) has to eat rice at least once a day. He ate a risotto meal almost everyday. Needless to say, this dinner is not excluded from his rice obsession. It was soooooo creamy. Only guys can eat those, ladies will flee when they see this. Carbs, and fats. EURO 9.

We could not finish the pizza. Ala Msian style, TAPAO! Was pleasantly surprised how pretty the take-away box was. It became our lunch food on the train next day, heading back to Rome.