Heading to Venice

We packed up and hit the road, heading to Venice.

As is the usual routine, we had a few hours to kill so we stopped at an Outlet mall of all things. We didn't specifically target an outlet mall, but Bella had been told by a friend to get hot chocolate from a place called Venchi, and the one on our path was in an outlet mall.

It was a swanky mall. Not an indoor mall. Outdoors like a typical outlet. But nicer than most US outlet malls. Venchi was pretty darned good hot chocolate. It was kind of like drinking excellent quality chocolate sauce it was so thick. I had a sip because I ordered a cappuccino. She asked me if I wanted chocolate in it, and I'm at Venchi, so I said sure. It was decadent.

Skechers in Italy (Alex currently works for Skechers)

The outlet mall

We looked around in a variety of stores. We realized that this was the perfect place to kill a few hours because the parking was free and safe, we had a variety of stores to look in, plenty of food options, and the nicest public bathrooms I've seen in Italy. They rivaled the London airport bathrooms in that each stall was like a small private room and immaculately clean.

We ate at a cafe and I saw a platter of french fries go by and decided that I needed to satisfy a french fry craving. Since the burgers came with fries, I decided to have an Italian burger. I didn't come to Italy to wat burgers, but it's fair to try at least one for comparison's sake. It was a decent burger. Not the best I've ever had, but a solid burger nevertheless. The fries were good, but they needed salt and ketchup and I ate them all up before I could ask for salt and ketchup, which are not automatically on the tables here.

When we finally got on the road again, I had my first tollbooth debacle of the day. I made a wrong turn directly after picking up the ticket at a tollbooth, so I had to drive to the next exit and pay that toll before I could get back into the same tollbooth and pick up another ticket and then take the right exit. The mistake only cost 82 cents and about 20 minutes of time.

We dropped Cristina off at the botanical gardens in Padua (Bella's town, lol). I went down a one-way road the wrong way after dropping her off and got a disapproving finger-wag from a guy on the side of the road. Whoops. The plan was for Bella and me to get checked into our Airbnb and Cristina could get her garden time in without torturing us in the heat. Then she'd take a train from Padua to Mestre (mainland Venice) and I'd pick her up at the train station around dinner time.

This just wasn't my day as a driver in Italy, because after Padua, I experienced tollbooth debacle #2. At the booth where you get a ticket, I accidentally picked a Europass lane that had no ticket machine. The light was red, but the turnstile was up, and cars were behind me. I was trapped. No way to go but forward. There were no human beings working these booths for me to get help from, so I just drove through. Bella gasped that I was going to get a ticket (of the citation variety, that is). I drove in nervous silence until the exiting tollbooth, where I would normally insert the ticket that, this time, I did not have. I had memories of the old days on the Florida Turnpike when they used tickets and if you lost your ticket you'd be charged the full amount for the longest distance possible. I had images of getting to this booth and being charged 300 euros for my stupid lane mistake. I hoped there would be a booth with a human. No luck. I pulled up to a toll machine and pushed the big red help button. A voice came on and I said something, in English, like "Uh, I went into the wrong lane at the last booth so I didn't get a ticket." He asked me where I got on the motorway. "Uh, there was an IKEA nearby" and then Bella told me it was Padova, so I added that clarification. "No problem," he said. Thank the stars! The screen showed 8 euros due. Sweet. Happiest I've ever been to pay an 8 euro toll. I paid and we were on our way.

As we neared Mira, we filled up the gas tank and got some groceries at Lidl.

We got settled at our new home and I did some blogging while making a dinner of ravioli. Sofia arrived in Rome in transit from Florida, so we were keeping track of her meeting up with her friend Anna (from Sweden). They'd be spending the night in Rome and then catching an early train in the morning to join us in Venice.

Cristina bought a train ticket that would arrive in Mestre at 8:30, but she missed it and had some difficulties with the next train not being there and the staff not knowing anything. She finally got another train that would arrive at 9:47. I drove to the Mestre station and finally found her despite the GPS taking me to a weird part of the station. I think we finally got home about 10:15. She had bought some snacks at the train station, so we went to bed as soon as we could.