Monaco, Venice, Modena

We arrived in Florence today, will be here for 3 nights, and will have an electric socket the whole time. My phone is so happy! We have wonderful things to say about Florence, but that can wait until next post.

In an attempt to catch-up, I'm going to do a multi-city post.
One thing that applies to these cities, and the two prior posts, is that the weather was amazing. It's been 20ish degrees and sunny for this entire trip. Suck it Torontonians.

Monaco was about what we were expecting (it wasn't Susan's first time there). Monte-Carlo was jammed with classic cars and luxury, while the rest of Monaco is a natural paradise. The city is built into a cliff face which makes for some great vistas, and a whole lot of stairs. I'm not going to attach pictures, but we will send some around after we get home and sort through them. Susan took her 500th picture while we were there, so don't worry, there will be lots.
A highlight of the town was their exotic garden (mostly a cactus garden) with it's very deep grotto.
My personal favorite thing about Monaco was our hotel, the Metropole. Our room was all luxury and breakfast was worth waking up for (for a change). It also has a restaurant by Joel Robuchon(sp?) that was once again fantastic but with enormous portions. Susan had her 3rd day in a row of eating duck. They had a duck press in the kitchen, but unfortunately non of the dishes on the menu that day were using it. We didn't have a camera with us so we didn't catch a picture of it, but I assure you it was very cool.

On our way to Venice we stopped in at Padova for another dinner. This time at Le Calandre. It made for a very interesting meal, but a bit more French than we were going for with our first meal in Italy. Highlight of the meal was called the 'plate of chocolate' and consisted of 11 different desserts, and came with a little video that they play on a projector. They liked the tech there, their wine list came on an Ipad app. The app looked really nice, and worked great, it had some data and sommelier notes available for each wine, and I bet it saves a lot of work for the staff.

Venice itself was almost a theme park, but we still had some great pies, and it beats the hell out of Disneyland. The whole gondola thing is an enormous rip-off, but we bit the bullet and did it anyways, and it was a pretty relaxing trip.
I actually bought a couple trinkets, and mailed them to Toronto. The rest of my shopping (if there is any) will likely happen in Rome so I can just carry it back, as mailing from here was a hassle.

Our trip to Modena was primarily food focused, and did not disappoint. We have found that since leaving the tourism focused towns food has gotten better, and a lot cheaper. The number of sports cars in town was cool (out front of the bank may as well have been a car show), but oddly enough I didn't see any of the famous brands that are made in the immediate area.
We had one more big dining meal here, possibly as good as Moo. The place was called Osteria Francesscana(sp?). Highlight dish for me was a fancied up sous-vide version of bolito misto. The only thing that brought this meal down for us was dining fatigue. It's all become too much rich food. Susan was full after the second course, and I'm at the point were I could go for a hot dog. So we might have one more big meal in Rome, but the dining portion of our trip is pretty much complete. On to the tiny trattorias and pizzerias!
I got some balsamic in Modena because it seemed logical. I think I got a good deal. Can anybody think of anything else I should be bringing back? Any souvenir requests? I assume traveling with cured meats is frowned upon.