Christmas Day Continued

 McDonald's for Christmas.  I know what you're thinking, and there's part of me that's thinking it too.  BUT, Mom was done for, as the Cruise, Friday's Train Ride, and the weird foods had just pushed her past her limit (I think), and Bill had Covid.  Comfort foods were the way to go.

Prior to me getting back with McDonald's, Bill was complaining about his fever feelings.  I knew that mom traveled with a small pharmacy, so I mentioned in a group chat that she probably had tylenol, which we all know helps reduce a fever.  Mom brought him over a couple (20), and he had taken those before I got back.

One of the things that I was excited about originally when coming to Innsbruck for Christmas, was that the hotel had mentioned to me that Christmas Eve is their "big" celebration, and most everything is closed, or closes early.  They told me that on Christmas Day, however, most everything is open.  Sadly, I learned that this is not true.  As you know, I went out exploring today, and I found that most everything is closed. Including all the grocery stores.  Now, earlier this morning when Bill was released from the ER, he was given a prescription.  (I don't think I've talked about this yet...)

However, the pharmacies were all closed, so we didn't know what to do.  The nurse told Bill that Innsbruck has "emergency" pharmacies, so if we went to any pharmacy they'd have the location of the nearest "emergency" pharmacy listed.  I one upped the Nurse, and I found it on my phone.  Sure enough, Innsbruck, and most of Austria, has no fewer than THREE pharmacies that are open 24 hours a day, depending on the size of the town.  They rotate the pharmacy so that no single pharmacy is stuck being the 24 hour pharmacy all year long.  

It was approximately 1.2 miles away, and the weather was surprisingly nice.  Since Bill was feeling good after the meds from the ER, we decided to walk it.  (Sorry, I'm jumping back in time, since it was technically this morning...)  After hoofing it over there, we found the pharmacy, paid the whole $10 for Bill's two prescriptions, and I was like "screw that walk, we're totally taking the scooter."  

One thing to note - Bill's trip to the ER cost him nothing.  And the medications, without insurance, cost him $10.  Bill was in shock at this point, so he followed me to the nearest scooter, and dutifully followed my lead.  I had seen all the scooters all over town, and remembered the chaos from Palm Springs.  Palm Springs wanted nothing to do with these scooters, but man oh man, are they amazing.  We downloaded an app called Tier, which is basically a GPS and Uber in one.  You scan the code on your scooter, hop on, and off you go.  It's like $0.10 per minute, and you can just jet all over town.  Max, 20 MPH, and there are some restrictions as far as where you can "end" your ride, but otherwise, our 1.2, or 1.4 or however far it was hike was a brief 5 minute scooter ride back to the hotel.  

SUPER. FUN.  I need one of these scooters now.
 


Anyway, back on track, Bill was happily (sarcasm) closeted (who's laughing now - he hasn't been in the closet in ages) in the hotel room for an indefinite amount of time.  The poor guy spent most of the day stressing over having exposed mom to Covid.  And then he started stressing about getting on the train, and flying home with Covid.  I quickly assured him that the CDC has effectively removed ALL Covid testing requirements, vaccine requirements, etc for flying into the states.  If only he could stop stressing as easily as I encouraged him, he'd probably get better that much faster.

Now, when we got to Innsbruck, our taxi dropped us off half a building away from our hotel.  As we walked to the hotel, we passed a placed called Mamma Mia's Pizzeria (truly).  They had some pizza in the window that was like, the size of Texas, and I knew that I had to try it.  Mom...not so much.  She exclaimed that she does NOT like pizza, and does NOT like pasta.  (Um...why are we going to Italy then?!)  Luckily for me though, it was one of the ONLY places open on Christmas Day, so ha!  I got to drag her over to pizza.  I'm reasonably certain that she only left her room because Bill was holed up and she felt bad for me going out alone.  

While we were finishing up dinner, I did get a facetime call from back home with some great news.  I think it had a bittersweet effect on Mom, as she was ecstatic about having another grandbaby (Congrats Cerra and Zach!), but then it drove home to her the fact that she was a LONG ways from home, and wasn't there to truly celebrate.  We had some tears, but in the end Mom was assured me that she was pleased that she was here doing something for herself, rather than being at home living her life for everyone else.  Hopefully that's true, and it wasn't just fluff to make me leave her room so she could sleep.

One last gratuitous shot of the Golden Roof right down the "street" from our hotel.  Literally steps away.

Christmas Day ended with me laying in bed, listening to Bill as he quietly hacked up a lung.  (Quietly being the relative term, as I could hear him in the hallway when I was telling mom goodnight...).   Now, to make sure I could sleep and not stress over the upcoming train ride to Milan tomorrow...!


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