Well, as previously mentioned, I haven't been up to much since I've been home here, so allow me to take a moment to talk about the food in Italy.  Simply put, the food is unbelievable.  Honestly, Americans don't know what they're missing until they go to a foreign country and eat a few times.  I spent a lot of time eating my favorite food: Pizza, but let me tell you, it is nothing like anything you've ever had in the U.S.  When you order pizza in a resteraunt, they bring you a whole one... probably about 14 inches across.  And you eat it all by yourself.  I know that sounds like a lot of food, but it really isn't, because the crust is so thin that there isn't a whole lot to each bite.  In any case, we ate pizza pretty much every day while we were there, and it was quite delicious.  It was interesting, too, because even though it was the same thing on the menu, it tasted just a little different at each place.  Another excellent food (as mentioned in the picture entry) is the gelato.  It's basically ice cream, but it's the creamiest, most flavorful ice cream you will ever eat.  We had gelato three or four times.  I could have eaten it every day.  The Stratciatella (Chocolate Chip Cookie-Dough kind of stuff) was especially excellent.

Our dinners were all provided in the tour fee and served in the hotel resteraunts.  It sounds like it might get boring, but because we stayed in 6 hotels over the course of the trip, we actually got to try quite a variety of things.  We had a variety of dishes using rice, and meats in different sauces that were usually quite delicious (although not always... a couple of the resteraunts were just not up to the standard of the others).  The deserts were to die for, especially since many of them incorperated the same gelato mentioned above.  We also ate breakfast in our hotels, and I tell you what... we in the U.S. can definitely take a cue from the Europeans on how to eat breakfast.  Croissants, baguettes, thinly sliced hams and cheeses, and occaisionally a small bowl of cereal.  That's the way to do it.

People drink wine with almost every meal in Italy, but fortunately it isn't considered unusal when someone doesn't drink, as I had no desire to.  Coke is incredibly popular across Europe, and was served in literally every resteraunt we visited on the entire trip.  Pepsi isn't present at all.  There isn't much in the way of diet pop, either.  Basically, you can drink Coke, Sprite, or Fanta.  I think the Coke was better there than it is in the states though.  When you order a drink, it is served to you in a glass without ice (they just don't use it, so don't ask), and there are no refills, so you'd better make it last!

Interestingly enough, I think the best memory related to eating had nothing to do with the food.  While in Florence, we stopped in a pizza shop for lunch that was a little bit out of the way (read: not incredibly full of tourists).  While we were there, a pair of street musicians came in and started playing in the middle of the resteraunt, then came around to each table to collect tips.  Apparently the citizens of Florence are stingier than most, because when they saw the size of our tip (which we thought was kind of small), they got very excited and played a song just for us.  Very cool.