March 6, 2023 - Market Day

A quiet day today. It rained during the night but by 9 it had cleared up. So far, we have been lucky with only one day that it rained all day.

We relaxed longer than normal before heading to the train station to ask about different options for Bologna. It seems that if we want to take the bullet train that only takes half an hour, we should book at least 10 days ahead to get a reasonable price and then we would have to stick to that date and time unless we take a more expensive ticket that can be changed at a fee. If we opt for the regional train, it takes an hour and a half, but the time is flexible to go and come back so we will go with that option and buy our tickets the day before when we see nice weather for Bologna. It is too hard to predict the weather 10 days ahead of time.

We then went to the Central market rather than the San Ambrogio one that we normally go to. There are many more booths to choose from at the centrale market, but the vendors are very pushy. We will keep going to the San Ambrogio market even if it is father away. I don’t like being pushed to buy stuff.

After coming back to the apartment to put our supplies in the fridge we went for lunch and then, for a fill up of our wine bottle. It must have a leak because it was empty. We asked for a recommendation since he did not have anymore of the Chianti we had liked. With the owner’s translation apt he gave us a taste of a wine with notes of cherry, and he says shiraz. I’m not sure we understood correctly but the wine tasted good, so we went with that. He told us again with the help of his apt that he gets his stock on Wednesdays. Isn’t technology great.

We wandered around town and went in a store that I had seen a review for. It was mostly old stuff full of dust. We browsed for a while and then since there was a cache not too far away, we went to find it. We did stop at the Santa Trinita cathedral for a look, but it was not as impressive as some of the other churches that we have gone into.

We have been here for two and a half weeks and had not seen any Canadians yet. Today on the way to the train station we met a family from Montreal. They asked how we knew they were Canadian. One of them had a big Canadian flag on her backpack, it was kind of a no brainer, and they all had roots backpacks another giveaway. We also talked to a lady from Alberta at lunch. She now lives in Florence. Her parents were visiting from Canada. The red maple leaf on her child’s bag was the giveaway for her.

All in all, it was a relaxing and good day and another cache as a bonus.