It's the Simple Things

So for the last couple weeks we've been facing quite a conundrum at night. We have two choices, open the windows and let in all of the nasty mosquitos and stay a little cooler or we can close the windows and let the room become a sweatbox. We've been opting for the former but the bug spray and all that hasn't deterred the little buggers a bit. Luckily for me, they always target Allie and I usually get away with only a few bites and they aren't too big at all.

Finally, after alot of research and questioning, we found a solution! A FAN! Hooray! Simple right? Just go to Home Depot or Target! Unfortunately, finding a fan in Italy is like finding the Holy Grail or discovering a unicorn. After much agony (and mosquito bites) we finally found a place that sold fans, they had three models. The smallest was 45 euros (think desktop fan and around 60 dollars), we asked about the other models and they said numbers we have yet to figure out the meaning of.

Pressing on, unrelentlessly, we walked up the street and found a store that had a standing fan for sale. We figured this had to be in upwards of a 100 euros based on the last store. In Italy, nothing has a price on it, so we had to ask in our best broken Italian how much it was. Of course, we couldn't understand what he said, so we asked, er, mimed to him to write it down. To our amazement the fan was only 18.80 euro! We thanked our lucky stars that we had found one of the last fans for sale in all of Italy and toted it home proudly, much like a mother and father leaving the hospital with a newborn.

In Italy, nothing is easy but it is oh so sweet when you finally figure out what your doing. Charles and Allie.