Trattoria Marione in Florence

   After arriving in Florence and checking into our hotel, the first order of business was to find a late lunch. I was dead-set on trying some ribollita (kind of a poor-man's soup and a speciality of Tuscany), and Trattoria Marione was said to have some great home-style cooking. Plus it was about a 5 minute walk from our hotel, another bonus considering that we were starving by that point in the day.
  Let me just say now: Marione did not disappoint. In fact, I was pretty sure I'd died and gone to Italian food heaven. Yuki and I had ordered ribollita, lasagna, and a seafood salad to share, but I ended up not really sharing much of the ribollita with him! Keila was quite happy with the lasagna too, although we did have a rather large the mess to deal with, seeing as the one thing Marione is lacking is a high chair. That fact was actually a bit surprising, since some of the fancier restaurants we went to had high chairs, and Marione is definitely a family-style place: very crowded and a bit noisy, with tables quite close together. Every time we went past it, it was jam-packed, too. Not that I blame people for frequenting it--our lunch was so good that we went back the next day for more! Oh, and to quote Bob Barker, the price is right: for the 3 rather large dishes I named above, a half bottle of wine, some bottled water, and of course the cover for the 'free' bread, our will came to 31 euros. Much, much better than the prices in Venice! If you happen to tour Florence, put this place on your must-visit list. And then go eat 3 (or more) bowls of ribollita for me.
 PS The menu is in Italian, but there may/may not have been translations in English? I can't remember. In any case, at least one of the waiters speaks English quite well!

Trattoria Marione: Via della Spada 27r   
Basically, Via della Spada is located between Via de Fossi and Via de Tornabuoni, near Piazza di Santa Maria Novella. Pretty easy to find! (And if you're confused as to what the 'r' is for, it means 'red'. In Florence, there are 2 types of street numbers: red is for businesses/restaurants etc, while blue is for residential. So one location may have two entirely different street numbers!)


                                    Yummy lasagna!

                                 Seafood salad with loads of seafood

                                          The AMAZING ribollita!