December 22nd 2014 - Siena, Italy - Day 127
Siena at Christmas
Today was a day for errands. With Christmas coming quickly Stacie and I decided we needed to head back to Siena for a proper grocery store and some better shopping. After our regular morning and our new hike down and up the hill a couple of times, we jumped and the car and headed back to Siena. We wandered around the streets for a few hours and got a couple things done and decided to have a quick bite to eat. I saw a little shop and proposed we grab something to eat there - big mistake. We should have turned around and walked out as soon as we walked in, but something made us stay. The food was mediocre, but that was not what made the experience terrible, it was the ambiance, or lack thereof. We ate at a formica booth, off of cafeteria plates with terrible 80's music being broadcast from a 50 inch plasma over Stacie's head. In a town as quaint and charming as Siena I had somehow found the cheesiest cafeteria on the planet. We ate quickly and headed out the door with me wishing I had never opened my mouth.
After lunch we needed to shop a little more and then head to the grocery store Stacie had found online before we left the apartment. We found it pretty quickly and then proceeded to spend the next hour and a half gathering the ingredients we needed for meals for the next five days. Everything in a foreign country is just a little bit harder than back home, but grocery shopping is much harder, especially when you want to really cook. Ingredients we take for granted like vanilla, brown sugar and baking powder just don't exist. Others exist, but are completely different and can be found in places you would never expect. The entire process is really exhausting and at the end of 90 minutes we were both spent. The trip was largely successful though and we felt good heading home pretty well stocked.
When we got home we made a quick dinner and just took it easy. It amazes me how just getting through a day like this can completely exhaust you - and I thought a day of work was hard - ha!