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Today we took a day trip to the island of Murano which is known for its beautiful glass. We took a vaporetto to the island and walked around. It was a beautiful sunny day. It is coming to the end of the very nice weather here, so we definitely lucked out.
Gooligan told me a few days ago that I had to get a souvenir. I hadn't been planning on it, but I'm glad she insisted and also that we waited until Murano to buy one.
I got this beautiful blue glass dish with a tree on it. Buying art or knickknacks can be difficult when we're in transition because I have no idea what my future home will look like but that's just part of this stage of life.
Gooligan got her niece and another girl she knows these adorable glass heart necklaces. Then we stopped for lunch at another amazing seafood restaurant.
After lunch we got back on the vaporetto intending to go to another island but we accidentally got off on Venice. We wandered through the streets a little in search of gelato but what we found was even better!
Acqua Alta is this amazing bookstore where the books are stored in a gondola and bathtubs! The owner was so nice and told us to go in the back of the store and see the staircase made out books and also the "fire exit" which was just a door that opened onto the canal. Haha!
We picked out all these postcards from a box out front and then took them over to a small cafe where we drank some cappuccinos and tried some cicheti (tapas or appetizer like snacks) while we worked on filling out our postcards and uploading our photos.
The cafe filled up pretty (an early batch of happy hour seekers) and then emptied almost as quickly. After we were finished with our postcards, we walked over to Alfredo's (the pound of pasta in a box restaurant) to pick up dinner.
Then we took a vaporetto back to the bus terminal, caught our bus home, didn't get lost this time, and ate our delicious pasta on the patio extension from our hosts' kitchen. Then we got in bed and watched some television and fell asleep.
Right before we went to bed, though, our host informed us that on Friday the buses are going on a strike so if we wanted to go to Venice we had to catch the limited commuter transportation (which runs until eight a.m. and then again in the late afternoon/evening). We'd already planned to take the day easy, though, and explore our local area--Mestre--so this actually justified our decision.
Today was our last day in Florence! Gooligan and I spent the morning filling out postcards and then we took the bus into town around midday. Our first priority was finding a post office. We sent off five postcards today! Apparently the Italian postal system is notoriously slow, though, so hopefully they won't take weeks to arrive at their destinations. We have another batch to send off, but the post offices close surprisingly early here (or at least the one we found), around 1:30 pm. We're taking a train to Venice at ten tomorrow morning, so I'm not sure we'll have time to drop them off before we're off to the next city. So hopefully, if we haven't gotten a card to you yet, we'll be able to send one from Venice!
After we mailed off our postcards, we picked up some groceries at the store for lunch: a baguette, a wedge of Brie, salami, some pasta salad from the deli, and two mysterious fried rice balls. Grocery shopping is so much more affordable than eating out, but the trade-off is that you either have to eat outside (if it's nice), eat while walking (if you can't find a place to sit), or eat (as we did today) at the weird awkward tables right next to the cashiers. At least it was inside, since today was on the cooler side.
Full of food and ready to go, we hit the streets once again. We passed this pretty cool piece of street art.
One of the most problematic aspects of our trip has been doing laundry. Everyone we're staying with has a laundry machine for the most part, but no one in Europe has a dryer. Which would be fine, ordinarily, except that since it's October and kind of wet or cold, it takes about four or five days for anything to dry. Since we're staying in most places between two and four days, it means that unless we do laundry right away on the first day, it won't be dry before we have to go. And even if we do laundry, whatever we wash won't be wearable for four days. Needless to say, it's a tough choice between smelling less-than-fresh and freezing. To make matters worse, we only have four warmer garments between us and right now three of the four are much too dirty to wear.
Thankfully there is an H&M here. Literally every other store we've passed has been in the hundred-euro range, but I found a basic black hoodie for twenty euros at H&M and tomorrow Gooligan and I plan on going to a laundromat in Venice.
The day was not a waste, however! We went to our favorite gelato place one more time. It will be hard to say good-bye to the lovely Il Edoardo Gelato Biologica! Gooligan loves the cinnamon flavor so much!
After gelato, we meandered back home, stopping at the grocery store again to pick up some more food for dinner. We had a salad with the leftover Brie, roast chicken, and artichokes! Mmm. Then, a little while after eating, our host surprised us by bringing us two slices of the cheesecake from last night. Such a sweet man!
Anyway, it's off to bed, so we're well-rested for our next big travel day! Venice tomorrow and then Gooligan's birthday the day after that!
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