Moving day

Can you spot the Floridian above? Hint: He’s the only one with high blood pressure haha. We had now moved so many times that we didn’t even investigate how to return our rental car to Florence and get a train ticket to Bologna. Let’s just say it all worked out and it wasn’t even too hard, but it definitely doesn’t feel routine yet, although Mike is really good with the ticket machines now!

Driving into Florence is so crazy, squeezing between cars and worrying about scooters passing on the right. But google maps managed pretty well and soon Mike had the car returned.

We easily walked 10 minutes to the Florence train station where it was packed with people coming and going in every direction on Sunday morning 10 a.m. It was around then Mike realized he had the card for opening the dumpsters in Tuscany in his pocket. Oh mannnnnn! No problem, we will just get an envelope, a stamp, and mail it back, should be “easy.”

We squeezed into the ticket machine room and like pros found tickets for Bologna leaving in a half hour. They don’t post the platform to wait on until the last minute, so everyone stands around nervously (in our case) staring at the Departures board waiting to find out where to go. Luckily ours was platform 8 because we had no idea where some of the platforms were located but 8 was right there.

We had window seats facing each other, but turned out most of the ride was underground, so blindly we left the Tuscany region and entered the Emilia Romagna region. This train was heading to Venice so you have to have your stuff ready and jump off fairly quickly. People had huge suitcases squeezing through, and again I was glad to only have our backpacks with my 4 rotating sweaters haha.

I have wanted to visit Bologna ever since reading the John Grisham book The Broker, maybe I already mentioned that. I pictured Florence only bigger, but my first impression was it’s way bigger than I thought and we were eager to get away from the train station. I sensed a guy watching me and thought, paranoid much? But then Mike said, Move, let’s get outta here! and pointed out the same guy. He was probably harmless or looking for a handout but still.

It was 12:30 p.m. and we couldn’t get into our AirBnb until 3 p.m. We hadn’t eaten so we started looking for food. One pretty restaurant had a paper sign that said “full.” No problem, we found another that was mostly empty, but the host asked if we had a reservation. It was a medium sized place with lots of tables and he sat us easily enough. We had all our stuff and it was warm so we also had our coats. Soon the place was packed!!!

On our little table we had 2 glasses for water, 2 for wine. The waiter set a bottle of water, a quarter liter of wine (we weren’t gonna be the only ones without wine this time!), then salt, pepper, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, and chili oil (“for our pizza”). Next we got a big salad with 2 plates and soon here comes 2 pizzas the size of dinner plates. We could barely move.

We declined dessert and coffee, but our guy then brought us a bottle of……….we have no idea what but it was like that lemon stuff thickened and sugared and with a serious amount of alcohol. He set down 2 tiny glasses so we sipped on a little and wowwwww it was strong! It was not on our bill so guess it’s their after-dinner mint haha!

It was a bit hilarious when we left because now we had to get all our stuff together and carry it out without knocking anything over. We managed but it was close!

We found a park to relax in and for the first time it was not cold at 57 degrees–felt like spring! Families had their babies in the swings while kids ran around and dogs barked. It was an older looking park but very welcoming.

I saw a moving van with guys lowering people’s stuff out of a 3rd story apartment–so that’s how they do it! Some of the buildings don’t have elevators, or if they do they are very small. So, out the window and down a like wheelbarrow attached to a ladder!

Our host, Alessandra, showed us our new place which is in a way more modern building compared to the 1400’s building we’ve been staying in! Everything is up-to-date and…..it’s not cold! The temperature is controlled by the building so you can’t adjust it, but it’s like 72 degrees inside woohoo!! The fireplace at the last place was wonderful, but we were ready for a little easy comfort.

We walked 2 blocks to a grocery store called Pam (open on Sunday evening woo!). It was big and nice and we got a bunch of stuff for 28 euros, including a 2 euro bottle of wine, hmmmm. I was proud of myself for remembering you gotta get your produce weighed in the produce section. At the last store I was the tourist who held up the checkout line aghhhhh! It felt like a small victory when I punched in a code and out came a sticker for my orange! Did I tell you the milk is not refrigerated?? The cereal sections are small and if you zoom in mayyyyybe you can see the 1 small jar of peanut butter. The rest are all jams or Nutella.

When it got dark I noticed the curtains on the windows in the bedroom and living area were sheer. I could see there were metal blinds but they wouldn’t budge. After further investigation, we realized there were up/down buttons and so just like in the movies we closed our electronic blinds. Mike said, “The things they don’t tell you!” as our host had never mentioned this.

Truthfully we felt a little travel worn yesterday. Everything went smoothly but we both shared how maybe we are a bit Italied-out or missing home a little. We decided to stay in and found the most wonderful opera performance in the Venice Theatre. I watched it until the end and the soprano received a bundle of red roses and everyone cheered and we got pretty excited for our upcoming days of exploring Bologna!