1 Dec 2020 – Our Man In Volterra

First day of the holidays! What to do, what to do. We decided to head out late morning for Navacchio, about 45 minutes away north to look for paints and lights… and maybe someone who knew a thing or two about air-conditioning units – although we figured that we were getting on grand with the cooling units we bought a while back.

We stopped quickly in La Rosa on the way, to scope out a cheap department store called Magazzini Mangini to see if we could cut short our journey and just buy lights. The stuff they had wasn’t to our taste, so onwards to Navacchio shopping centre!

We masked-up and went to Casa, and bought some knick-knacks and some gently glowing balls (bedside lamps). Happy with our lot, we decided to head down to OBI. Spotting a lift, we got inside, thinking it would take us down a full level to where OBI is. However, we quickly discovered that the lift was for disabled access to the store and just went down about 7 feet to the same level as the bottom of the stairs into Casa. Thoroughly humiliated, but laughing, we went on our hunt for OBI.

OBI had paints, but not the ones we wanted… it had nice air-conditioning units too – but I chickened out.

Quickly nipping into Euronics to confirm we had no impulse to shop for electronics, we had a big flip-off lunch in Wild West. A nice burger and fries for both of us, but damn we had to wait 20+ minutes for a table – although it was still (albeit barely) Covid-compliant. It also had yapping dogs. Italians love their dogs and they are frequently welcome in restaurants.

Afterwards, we went back to La Rosa, and picked up a couple of heavy terracotta decorated boxy-type things, which we’d use to hold the doors to terraces open. Handy! We also checked out the opening hours of a second-hand type store – Il Mercatino Dell’Usato (which I nicknamed ‘tutta la merda’ due to little bit of everything it seemed to have in stock behind its locked gates).

Then back home. I don’t think we ate much, as we’d had a big lunch, but not so big that we didn’t head back out into town to take some snaps. I also indulged in a lemon granita from Isola del Gusto to cool me down.