Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Today was Market Day and we went early to check it out. I expected something like a Farmer’s Market, with maybe a few souvenirs and local crafts thrown in. The market is held in and around the infamous Fortress of yesterday’s adventures.

This is what we found. Picture a large department store – no, make that half a dozen large department stores – with aisles and aisles of everything you could possibly imagine. There were aisles of housewares, aisles and aisles of clothing, a purse section, a cosmetic section and so on and so on. There was even a pet market.

I’m sure there were over 500 individual booths. We were a little overwhelmed when we first saw it but we were soon enjoying traveling down the various aisles. And I even made a purchase!

We headed back to the hotel to pick up our laundry, but made another stop at the church just beside the hotel (Church of San Dominico). Pat had read about some of the relics in the church (the head and thumb of St. Catherine) and we wanted to go back for a second look.

Today’s task was to find the laundromat. Our hotel doesn’t allow you to wash any clothes. We could wash in secret, but drying would be a problem.

On the way to the laundromat we stopped and toured the Opera Della Metropolitana (the Cathedral Museum). We saw lots of art and relics, as well as the original sculptures from the Cathedral. From there we went into the Cathedral where I was stunned by the artwork on the floors. Even a visit to the Crypt wasn’t as creepy as you might think. We must be getting a little better at reading Italian as we could interpret some of the titles. On the same ticket we also get a couple of other museums and galleries which we will see another day.

We stopped for lunch at a lovely restaurant perched on the side of one of those steep hills. The table legs were different lengths so they sat level. After lunch we found the laundromat and enjoyed some quiet time sitting at a table in the shade outside. The table was really associated with a nearby restaurant but the waitress said it was no problem for us to sit.

After the laundry was done and stuffed into our backpacks we set off for some more exploring. We were looking at areas we hadn’t seen before and, in our wandering, ended up near the botanical gardens at the University. This was on the list of things we wanted to do so we got out the map and found it. We didn’t have enough time to see it before closing but we may go back another day when we have more time.

Finding our way home was a breeze – very few steep climbs. And, miracle of miracles, we found an escalator to help us down. We had to walk down two flights of stairs and then got on a series of six escalators that took us to the square below.

Of course with all that help getting down, getting back up seemed even more difficult! There were 80 steps to the entrance of the hotel, and 92 steps to the street above our hotel (I just had to run ahead and count)!

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