Carly Tavares
Intro Journal
August 26, 2026

Hey everyone! I’m Carly Tavares, a marketing intern for Elon Dining! This semester I will be doing a Bites
Abroad segment as I travel around Europe and my home base: Florence, Italy.

On our first day arriving in Italy, my roommates and I decided to start off with the basics, which obviously entails pizza and pasta. For our very first meal we decided to walk around and see what we could find. We stumbled upon a cute little pizzeria which was a bit off the beaten path, about 10 minutes from the Duomo. We split pizzas and a mixed salad and sat for well over an hour chatting and enjoying ourselves. The pizza in Italy is a bit floppier and served uncut as you are meant to do it yourself at the table. Something I also found interesting is how relaxed the lifestyle is here. No one rushed us to get the check or take our food away, and in fact we were the last people in the restaurant by the end of our meal.

For dinner that night, we gathered a bigger group with some other girls from our sorority studying here and had dinner right in front of the Duomo. I believe this was more of a touristy restaurant as are most restaurants around the center of the city, but regardless, the food was amazing. We all ordered pasta, but everyone agreed that my pesto pasta was the best one. The pasta has a lot more of a bite than it does in America, which is considered ‘al dente’. The portions are much smaller as well, but pastas are meant to be a first course before a meat or fish dish. They also always offer espresso after your meal, which I am told is for digestion. As I continue along my study abroad journey, I am hoping to learn more about
certain food traditions and to taste new things!