Afternoon and Evening

This afternoon began with one of the most fun things to do anywhere, particularly while traveling: laundry.

The place we’re staying has a washer, and since I knew that European washers are sometimes washer/dryer combos, I had assumed it was a dryer too when I read the description of the place months ago. Wrong.

(I am learning on this trip that I am spoiled when it comes to how much I, as an American, consume — not just in terms of energy, like with a dryer, but in general. Garbage here is handled differently, and IMO it’s handled much better here (we do recycling but they do a lot more here, etc) so hopefully I’ll take any habits back home with me now.)

I’m fine with letting some things lie flat to dry, but other things need a dryer, so we looked up laundromats and found one not too far away. We washed everything in the washer at our place, just to save a few euro, and no kidding, each load took about 120 minutes to complete. I’m sure this was affected by the setting I used, but I’m not sure what I could’ve done to shorten it. The first load we did, we sat there for about the first 60 minutes waiting for it to be done, and then we got bored/annoyed and headed out to climb the Duomo cupola. 😛 We came back, put our second load in the washer, and headed back to Il Mercardo Centrale for a cup of tea, a coffee, and some things that looked awesome.

With our washing done, we bagged it all up and walked to the laundromat. We took magazines and iPads, expecting about another two hour laundry session…

… but no! These dryers were done in 20 minutes!

And there was a cat hanging out in the window above the laundromat!

We headed back home, made some dinner, and went back out for a walk after dark.

MOUNTAINS OF GELATO.

Crossing the bridge during the day, you walk past a lot of shops. At night they’re all shut up in some of the most beautiful security boxes I’ve seen.