The Town of Terracotta

Well hello there! I'll be honest, I'm nodding off a bit so I'll do my best as quickly as possible. 

Our plane was on time, early in fact, which resulted in us having plenty of cushion to make an error. We landed at 0700 and we are 6 hours ahead of EST. We only slept for maybe three hours on the plane but it didnt feel like a terribly long flight. We arrived in Venezia (Venice) and easily bought tickets for an express train from the airport to the train station after being waved through customs without a look at my passport, Erica was one of like 5 people who randomly got picked to get her passport stamped but she still didn't have to answer any questions or do anything. Strange. Anyway, unfortunately, we got on the wrong bus and it was making stops- people were also filling the aisle seats of the bus and forcing us to climb over them with our bags but there was a nice young man who let me know when we were at our stop and eventually we found the area we needed to be in. In contrast, Erica hit her seat buddy in the head with her luggage.

First order of business was to find wifi to check in but we couldn't get connected so we settled for caffé (coffee), an espresso and a caffé marocchino (mocha). It was ONE EURO for the espresso and 1,40 for the mocha. SO good (strong) and much cheaper than USA. We had to wait quite a while for the train as I had given us some leeway in the event our flight was delayed.

On the train an American ended up finding us, his name is Preston and he's from South Carolina. A Clemson fan who takes trips with his buddies once a year and works on a boat that services oil rigs as an engineer. He was very nice and chatty which made the train ride fly by, he exited at Bologna which was one stop before us. We walked off the train and followed the excellent instructions from our B&B host only to find him standing waiting for us at the curb. He carried all of our bags up to the third floor to our little sheep-filled abode. He gave us a map and great recommendations for food & gelato, as well as touristy things. He taught us that red numbers on buildings are for commercial addresses and black numbers for residential.

We were so glad to have a shower and change after so many hours (30) in the same clothes in HOT weather. Our room is adorable! After cleaning up we headed to the city and I got gelato on my purse which ended up all over my shirt and erica dropped hers on the ground. We're basically a mess. It was DELICIOUS and I'm sure we walked off that cone and eight more. We came back to change and then went to the cathedral but our dress was not appropriate.. Did I mention that it's hot here? So we walked around more tripping on the cobblestone because we were busy looking at all of the amazing things around us.

After settling on Pallazzo Vecchio (Town Hall) Museum, Tower, and Battlements, we proceeded to buy tickets and actually got "student" tickets, I guess I look 25 😉.

The work was incredible, we saw several marble statues and so many wall murals and paintings and intricate carvings. The view was also spectacular, we climbed 14 flights of stairs, plus all of the flights taking you through the museum, to get to the top of the tower. We saw a replica of Michaelangelo's statue, David. Everything was incredible. Next we walked down the Ponte Vecchio (a bridge) and stared in all the shops.

We visited Il Santo Bevitore for dinner and while we didn't have a reservation (you basically always need one here), we were able to get a table and we both found our pasta delicious. We also ate it the Italian way and saved our bread for last! The wine was on point as well and we left quite satisfied, had to be out by nine in order to get the table- Italians really like to have dinner long and late.

We got more delicious gelato from a different place and now we are ready to go to bed because we have a busy day tomorrow.

Today we learned: permesso (excuse me), scusi! (sorry!), grazie (thank you), ciao! (hello & goodbye), and buona sera (good afternoon).

Ciao!