The last morning of our holiday was dramatic, but not nearly as dramatic as our last night:  we were sitting quietly in the bedroom of our airbnb watching a new episode of Game of Thrones, when our host knocked to see how we were and what we’d been doing all day.  She saw our window was closed (so that we could hear GoT!), and came storming in to open it, then propped our bedroom door open – it opened into the living room – and called her male visitor (whom she introduced as her dentist) into our room to meet us.

Rather than entertaining him, she spent most of the next hour sitting on our bed and telling us her life story – and what a life it was!  It was excruciating.  She was absolutely wasted, extremely loud, and pretty racist, and I genuinely didn’t know how we would get rid of her.

Eventually she did return to her guest, and we sneakily closed the door and wondered if we could just tie our sheets into a rope and climb down from the fourth floor in the morning.

We didn’t go that far:  we woke up early, saw that she was passed out on the sofa in the living room right outside our door, and tried to tiptoe past to the front door with our bags.  As we opened the front door it let out a long creak, and we heard her call from behind us.  Nooo!  Fortunately we still managed to get out pretty easily, and almost ran to this nearby vegan cafe, La Margherita, where we tried to recover our nerves.  This place was just what we needed.

They had a solid breakfast array:  Dr HH got the last croissant, and I got a delicious slice of carrot cake, which was super moist and nicely spiced.

We stayed for an early lunch too before our flight back to the UK, and shared these two pies.  The one on the left was aubergine, and it was sensational.  That lovely aubergine flavour!  The one on the right was full of potato and tomato, and was also good – but it was no aubergine.

It was the perfect culinary farewell to Italy, and just what we needed after a very intense airbnb experience!

We had such a great adventure in Italy:  the food was largely incredible, we loved almost every place we visited, and we had a gelato every day.  Truly living the dream!  I highly recommend it as a vegan holiday destination, as even the places without an abundance of plant-based food (a)are pretty enough to make up for it, and (b)have gelato.  Oh, gelato!

Thanks for reading along this VeganMoFo – it’s been a lot of work, so I really appreciate everyone who has read/liked/commented throughout October.  I’ve already chosen my theme for next year, so I hope you’ll stick with me!