After picking us up from the airport, Mara took us across the street to one of the largest malls in Italy. The outside walls of the mall were decorated with 3-D red alligators, and thousands upon thousands of plastic animals were waiting inside for us.

There were dolphins hanging from the ceiling.

And we saw this grouping of animals and thought it was quite funny. You could play the game "Which two of these aren't like the other three?" Jonathan and I found it funny anyway. (He categorized by animal, while I categorized by color.)

While we were there, Mara thought we should all have some gelati (gelato is singular, and since we each had two scoops, it's gelati). Yummy Yummy Yummy.

From here we went back to Mara's house where she cooked us a fantastic dinner of fresh gnocchi pasta and a tomato salad. We spent the rest of the evening drinking fine Italian wine and getting to know each other.