Today was GLORIOUS! I slept in until almost 11:30 and I regret nothing! When I woke, I heard Mom in the shower and decided to just lay there for awhile. No point in rushing to get up if she’s going to style her hair and take her time.
We finally got moving around 12:30.. we walked back to that sandwich shop from the first day we were here-and stood in line to order. It was busy!We got our drinks (wine for me, a Coke Zero for mom), and our numbered ticket for our food, and mom snagged us a spot at the bar to sit. About 20-30 minutes later, we got our sandwiches and they were just as good today as they were before, if not better!
We ate and people watched the crowd and then walked back to the apartment to get some clothes and things to ship home, to lighten our load. We gathered it all and walked about 10 minutes in the opposite direction, taking note of all the stores, shops, and restaurants we’d missed by never walking this way before!
The shipping store charged us €140 to ship back a 30lb box of stuff-clothes, shoes, water bottles.. surely not enough to weigh 30lbs-but alas, I saw the scale. Thank goodness! This should definitely make our travel day tomorrow easier on us! Once we paid and got our tracking information, we went back into the dress shop we passed earlier. Many of these Italian stores have “one size” dresses and skirts. They don’t say “one size fits all” or “one size fits most” like at home-it’s just “one size” and hope for the best lol
The dresses in the one size don’t quite fit me right, the top is too stretched, but the skirts shockingly did fit, so I got a couple (since they’re so lightweight anyway, it shouldn’t add much weight back to my bag-I hope!). We returned my skirts and mom’s suitcase (that’s how she toted her clothes and shoes she shipped) back to the room, again, knocked out those 50 stairs, and then walked to the other side of the river to see about getting our nails done.
The ladies working said they were booked, but if we’d be willing to come back at 6:15 this evening (2.5 hours from now), they’d stay open for us. So, we wandered around, had coffee on a patio, looked at clothes and souvenirs, had a vintage wine tasting (one wine was from 1969, one was from 1980, and the last was from 2009) and then finally made our way back to the nail salon at 6:10. They promptly got to work on our fingernails, and an hour later we had freshly painted nails that didn’t look like claws anymore. We were so grateful!!
We went back to the room for the millionth time today and changed into our dinner clothes.. I wore one of my new skirts, mom had on a pretty dress she got the other day in Cinque Terre. We started walking towards the restaurant a friend from Kennestone, Mercy, told us about. When we found it, the line out of the building was so long we couldn’t even get to the door to have a peek inside! A little disheartened, we walked around some more and eventually found another restaurant that looked good. Because of Mercy’s recommendation, we were determined to have Florentine steak for dinner!
After lots of consideration, we ended up ordering the special.. we shared the T-bone steak with potatoes, plus bruschetta as an appetizer (with bread and olive oil, duh), and we each got our own desert. All for €50! The bruschetta with my wine was phenomenal. We watched the chef come get a hunk of meat from a refrigerator on display, toss it on his shoulder (with a towel laid out like a baby’s burp cloth) and lug it back to the kitchen.. impressive.
When our waiter brought out the steak, we didn’t realize he was going to put on a show of cutting it for us and then sprinkling salt, pepper, and oil on the pieces. We ordered it medium, for me, and then once mom got what she wanted on her plate, they took hers back to cook it a little longer for her. I’m here to tell you, that may have been my most favorite, flavor filled steak I’ve ever eaten in my entire life! It was so damn good. Not to mention the grilled potato wedges. As I’m writing this, completely miserably full and in considerable pain, my stomach just did a little growl thinking about it! There ain’t no dang WAY I’m actually hungry!
As a matter of fact, when he brought out our tiramisu, I thought I’d just keel over a die right there! I’m still shocked I was able to eat it at all, but of course I shoveled it all in my mouth just the same. And for the record, as good as this tiramisu has been, my Aunt Shannon’s is better. Anyway, as I was sitting there, thinking about how miserable my mile run will be tonight, I decided I’d set an alarm for the morning and knock out my run for tomorrow early-no more of this running at 11pm just barely making it happen!
So, when we got home, I ran my mile.. and I watched the videos that my friend Brittany sent me for some in room workouts-I was so full, some of them I could barely do at all, let alone more than once. But I at least attempted them all with the idea that I’d do the workout after my run in the morning. Mom and I started the last of our laundry, and we headed off to bed.. where I’m forcing myself to stay awake to write this, and I’m so happy it’s done so I can close my eyes and sleep every second until my alarm goes off at 7am. We leave for Venice tomorrow and have to check out of the Airbnb at 10am. Something tells me Andrea will be very punctual in his arrival for the keys 🙂
Goodnight!