Little Victories, When the Ordinary Is Extraordinary (IKEA)
Today we woke up at 2pm, had breakfast and said screw it. We're wearing t-shirts. (That's how long it takes an American to give up on looking Italian. We didn't though. Ever.) Because today we went to IKEA! There was somehow a familiarity to it all even though nothing was in English, but Italian or Swedish instead.
We bough our bus tickets, validated them wrong, and took way too long to understand which bus we were supposed to get on. In fact, once we finally found it, Hannah took this photo, which describes our attitudes perfectly:
But finally after a thirty minute bus ride, a missed stop, a mile backtrack, and almost getting hit by a car, we made it to the promise land.
Where we had to walk around to the front and almost went in the wrong way before a cop stopped us and pointed us in the right direction. Then we still kept going the wrong way until he jogged after us and told us to turn around. But we survived, bought our extra hangers and a new corkscrew, and made it out alive with everything packed into our cheesy lookatmeiamclearlyanamericanstudent canvas bags that LdM gave us.
Then we just had to find the bus stop we originally missed in complete darkness. Don't get me wrong, there were street lamps and headlights, but the sun sets at 5:30 here and we were in what Erica referred to as "The Projects of Florence." The condition of the scary fence and dumpster combo behind this IKEA is representative of how this area of town looked. But everyone seemed happy and nice and no one hit us with their cars or their fists.
Also, Madi accidentally broke the law by not validating her bus ticket when we got back on. But honestly it was way too easy. I'm not saying I recommend that you break the law, but like, maybe consider it.
We made it back to the heart of the city and stopped by our favorite local market to get a couple of things for dinner aka wine and chicken. For all the moms out there trying to see pics of everything, here is a nighttime streetview I took today.
Yes, that is pretty much all pasta in the window. This is by far not the biggest or best market in the city but it's close to our apartment and also it's the only one we know how to find without looking at a map.
In total, it was a great day, but I didn't get gelato and I'm not happy about that at all and also I still have no idea what I'm doing.
