December 18th, Montreal. I had just finished and handed in my last term paper two days ago on the 16th, and the night before that I had spent in a full panic because I couldn't find my passport anywhere and thought I would have to apply for a new one. Luckily, I was able to find the passport - but that one night of panic, terror, and no sleep completely threw me off my track. Before I knew it, it was the day of my flight out to Europe.
I was excited. I was finally going to Italy! A place I had dreamed about going to since childhood.
The day just seemed to drag by and I couldn't wait until it was 5:45 PM, my flight being at 9PM and putting in to account that it would take an hour to arrive at the airport, I was hoping to arrive by 7PM. Right off the bat though, things didn't work out exactly as planned and what I had initially thought would be a smooth path to the airplane turned into a very rushed and hurried affair. Before I knew it 5:30 rolled around and I was trying to shovel some sort of dinner in to my mouth despite not being all that hungry because I had a late lunch at around 2PM. After that, 5:45 and my roommate who was seeing me off was already waiting for us to go, but then I realized I had totally forgotten to close and lock my suitcase, write my cheque to my landlord for January and leave him a little note that I would be gone, and pack my backpack!
But alas - I managed to get out of the house, and then my next stroke of misfortune. Apparently, I couldn't buy a ticket to the airport at the nearest subway station (you have to buy a daypass and apparently those are not offered on Fridays?) and so I had to muster up $10 in coins to pay for the ticket directly on the bus. Thankfully there was a handy newspaper stand in the station where I hurriedly bought gum, and probably quite rudely asked the store clerk if you he could give me $10 in coins, before rushing out of the station and down the two blocks to the bus stop. I had missed the first bus at 6PM which I was hoping for - but no big deal, a bus comes every 15min and I caught the next one.
At the airport, with my printed ticket, I sped through security and was at my gate with a good half and hour to spare. Grabbed a granola bar from my backpack (I had brought 4 with me as well as a bag of apples) and sat down with my trusty 3DS which would accompany throughout the rest of the flight.
The flight itself was largely uneventful. We got served dinner, I put on Guardians of the Galaxy and settled back to play for my 3DS for the majority of the flight, before falling asleep during the last three hours. I was flying British Airways and unlike Aircanada, they do not provide outlets at the seats so I had to conserve my 3DS battery. Also - it was late, I was tired, and I knew I would be arriving at London Heathrow at 9AM in the morning anyway so I might as well get all the sleep I can - I still had a whole day ahead of me after arriving!
We landed in Heathrow at 8:30 but didn't get off the plane until 8:50 which meant I had to make a speedy trip through the terminal as my next flight was at 9:40 and the gates closed at 9:20. Being early morning, it was not surprising that even the fast-track lines were ridiculously busy, and when I made it to security I had to politely ask everyone in front of me if I could move ahead or else I would miss my flight. The benefits of being a shy, small girl who probably still looks like she's in high school, and traveling alone, means that people seem to take quite a pity on me and are usually very eager to help me out. After asking the family in front of me if I could move ahead, I expected no more, but the husband encouraged me to go on and when he noticed I wasn't about to, took it upon himself to ask everyone else in front of me to make way for me. I thanked him, sped through security and arrived at my gate just in time for boarding - but I was quite anxious. I was supposed to be meeting my parents and brother for this very same flight (they had flown in from Vancouver) - but I didn't see them yet and we were boarding!
Nevertheless, I figured that they would appear eventually and sat at my seat waiting. Appear they did, sitting a couple of rows in front of me - and then we were off to Rome.
We landed in Rome at about 1:30PM, closer to 2PM and met up with representatives from our tour group who informed us, after we had gathered my parents baggage (me and my brother simply hand-carried ours on to the plane), that the bus provided for the tour group would not be leaving until 3:30 so all we could do was sit inside and wait. So we did. My 3DS died on me, my phone was running out of batteries, and I was struggling between feeling hungry but also not very willing to eat. 3:30 rolled by, the bus came, and we finally arrived at our hotel.
It was a nice, cute little place on top of a hill, but it had a strange layout. The lobby was on floor -1, our floor was 2. Me and my brother had initially taken the stairs thinking, two floors wasn't much!, but turns out we had to walk four. Either way, it didn't matter much - we took the stairs every time.
After getting to our rooms, we sat, and waited. There would be an included little bus tour around Rome later at 5:30 (it was around 4:30PM) and after that dinner was to be at 7:30 inside the hotel - a small welcome dinner. Our sister arrived sometime by herself - she had already been in Italy for nearly 3 weeks before us, and our little Italy trip was finally starting to begin.
There isn't much to say about the bus tour - we went around the streets of Rome and our travel direction told us what options we had for the next three days, and what we were going to do, and then the bus came back to the hotel and we had a nice little buffet dinner with pasta, salad, some pork, and some creme pudding for dessert.
It was after this dinner that me and my siblings decided to go for a walk. My sister had already been in Rome for a couple of days, and apparently we live quite close to the Vatican, so we walked in that general direction before turning up some stairs and just walking up a hill north of our hotel. We didn't go anywhere fascinating or that interesting, but it was just a nice walk out at night on a surprisingly warm December evening (it was 15C). Back to the hotel at 9:30PM and a quick night because the next day was starting at 8:00AM with a tour around St. Peter's Basilica and the Vatican!
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