If you’ve ever been to a landlocked city in Italy during the month of August, I’d like to start this post by apologizing. Yes, August in Florence sucks a big one–everyone goes off on their lovely holidays to exotic locations, all of the good shops and restaurants have limited hours or close completely, and the horse-sized mosquitoes invade your bedroom so that you wake up in the morning looking like a human-sized version of the board game Twister (read: BIG ITCHY ANGRY SPOTS ALL OVER YOUR BODY).
As I haven’t been tour guiding for the past month (yes, my job is entirely dependent on students coming into Florence and not wanting to do anything on their own–oh, yeah, and I went on vacation. So sue me.) I’ve had some free time to do a little relaxing out in the Tuscan countryside. And you know something?
Tuscany in the summertime doesn’t suck. In fact, it can be pretty awesome.
On Saturday, the boyfriend was feeling sorry for me (to be fair, my dog died this weekend. RIP Ollie. You were the best boyfriend I ever had.) so he took me out of the sweltering armpit that is Florence and off to Consuma for a few hours. Where is Consuma, you might ask?
No clue, folks. That’s what Google is for. (*Sidenote: upon actually googling Consuma, turns out this place really is a podunk middle-of-nowhere town that not even Google cares about).
We drove around in the car for about 45 minutes before stopping at this little place (don’t ask me what its called, I don’t know or care) that makes drool-worthy schiacciata bread, along with a crapload of other Tuscan specialities like prosciutto crudo, olives, cheese and delightful little chocolate thingys. We pigged out on a mix of schiacciata, mushrooms, olives and prosciutto (the picture looks a lot daintier than it actually was. We made that food our bitch.) :
After we’d gorged on enough carbs to run the New York City marathon (twice), we hopped back in the car and headed up the road to search for a place to have a coffee and a poo. Yes, those are important criteria in any day trip.
We stopped at a chalet-type looking place for our coffee, but alas the line was too long a.k.a neither of us felt like waiting for other people to get out of our way, so we decided to head back to Florence.
And that’s all, folks. Sometimes all it takes is a few hours to remember that life is precious and good.
The Florence Diaries 
sounds like a fantastic afternoon! love the photos 🙂 and any chance to escape Florence in the summer is well worth it