I managed to fly home successfully and was able to spend lots of good family/friend bonding time over the week of x-mas and new years. I of course had some things on my list that I wanted to do while I was in the USA: go to Borders to read some books and drink a coffee, go to Starbucks for a grande coffee(they don't know the meaning of grande coffee's here), watch an American film all in English, use a dryer for my clothes, go shopping, drive my car, sleep in my bed (well almost all of the time) and have wonderful mom's cooking : ) I do definitely take for granted the things I have in CT where I just cannot have here in Espana. All of these things I was able to achieve while home, as well as being with the people that I love most!
A few days after Christmas on a tuesday afternoon, mom and I were going about our usual routines at home, but we both noticed how windy it was outside--about 45 mph we think! All of a sudden, a huge oak tree in our backyard landed on our house in the middle of the afternoon! I was in my room 2 minutes before and had decided I should go shower and get ready to leave to see some old coworkers that day. Then, a huge thump hit and our whole house shook. I was immediately worried that something had happened to my mom, but turned out she was fine in the kitchen talking to my Uncle Doug, but she had seen the whole thing happen.
We ran outside to see what happened and saw the humungous tree that had fallen on the house and smashed a good portion of our porch, our top roof, and (with mala suerte) my room :( A tree had broken off at the top and plunged into my roof and ceiling so that I could see a branch coming through my room haha. At the time, I was ready to cry when I saw this huge branch and hole in my roof, as well as a branch that had come through my window, but now after the matter I can laugh about there being a tree stuck in my room. Luckily and thankfully to God, no one was hurt during this and the porch and my room are being repaired as we speak. Always knew that I needed a reconstruction on my room anyways : )
My last night home was New Years Eve with my parents, which was "different" than how I usually spend it haha. We had a nice sit down dinner, drank a glass of champagne, then played Clue and Labrynth before we had our one other glass of champagne to toast the ball dropping. Then, we all went to bed afterward since I had to get up and leave for the Logan Airport in Boston. Overall, it was a wonderful trip home to see my whole family and friends that I have dearly missed over the past few months.
My trip back was a whole other story....
Mom and dad drove me to the Logan Airport around 1pm, which means I arrived there around 3:30. I went to use my laptop while waiting for my plane to leave at 6, while trying to prepare myself for the next day and a half of traveling. I ended up sleeping a little more than I usually do on the 8 hour flight over to Madrid (with a little help from some Nyquil : ) and arrived in the morning there at 7am. I was originally supposed to continue on to Sevilla and then to Bollullos, but this is where I changed airlines and went to another terminal in Madrid airport to fly to Rome! I already had to wait from 7am-4pm until my flight took off to Rome. I was watching "Friends" episodes all day, sleeping on the chairs--good thing I brought my little airplane pillow!, and people watching of course to try and occupy my time until 4.
It finally gets close to 4 when I see a bunch of people at my gate line up, and so I get my stuff ready and stand in line. We wait there for almost an hour until someone comes on the loud speaker to speak in Italian. My spanish didn't help me at all here when they spoke on the intercom to say that "our flight had been delayed because of technical difficulties with our plane's engine and that it was still in Rome as of then"...I got the hint by just noticing everyone's faces panicking and leaving the line to go elsewhere. It was delayed until 11:45pm...and all I could think was, what more am I going to do in this airport?? Luckily, I came upon this woman and her husband with their two small children. I noticed the mother had been speaking Spanish, English, and Italian so I decided she looked friendly enough I would go up to talk to her. I had been trying all night to get a hold of the hostal I would be staying at in Rome, but something wasn't right with the number I was dialing. My friend who was supposed to be meeting me in Rome should have been there by early afternoon, but I couldn't reach her on her phone either. Then I was thinking to myself..."I'm going to have to sleep in this airport or Rome's aren't I?
The very nice woman named Laura helped me reach my hostel by phone and then offered to take me with her family to get dinner in the airport. I was so scared and lost by this time, that it made me feel so much better to have a family like this simply offer to bring me to dinner with them. Laura even told me that if I couldn't get into my hostel, that I was more than welcome to stay with them at their house in Rome (it seems like I always find the kindest and most generous people on these trips I take on my own) They helped me get my luggage when we finally arrived to the Rome Airport by 3am and retrieved a taxi for me. I finally got a hold of the owner of the hostel, who told me he would not be there at the hostel, but that he had called my roommate Joanna and told her to wait up for me--poor Joanna who had just been traveling 10 days before. So half an hour & 45 Euros later, the taxi driver got me safely to Alice and Wonderland Hostal. It's a bit ironic that we were staying at this hostel since Alice and Wonderland translated into Spanish is "Alicia en el Pais de la Maravilla" which is what all of my kids at school call me :)
I was so glad to see my Joey (Joanna) had left me a little note on the door saying which button to ring and that she would be up to get me in. I wasn't more glad to see a familiar face in that moment than I had for a long time. Luckily Joanna had been there for me, although almost ready to doze off :) 30+ hours later and I was there in Rome, Italy with my friend from Spain and we were going to see all the sights in the next week. It was a little rocky during the week with the tree hitting our house and almost not making it to Rome in time, but I still got there in one piece and survived my Christmas Adventure! With a little help along the way from my family I met in Madrid Airport and a (little luck of the Irish)--it ended up being an amazing trip throughout the week in Rome, Florence, and Pisa. I felt so lucky to have been able to do the best of both worlds--see my family and friends at home as well as travel an exciting adventure with one of my good friends to an amazing and historically rich place like Italy.
To tell a little bit about my actual Italy trip when I got there--it was pretty much raining there off and on the whole time, but we still made the best of the trip and had so much fun doing everything. A lot of the places we went to were inside anyway so we did not mind. As soon as I found some good rain boots in Florence, I was all set for the rest of the week :)
We started off 3 days in Rome--the first we had to sleep in a little bit to get ourselves reenergized for the coming week. We walked around the area of our hostel first, peeking in some churches, browsing the markets on the streets, and then to the Colosseum. We didn't have much time there before the inside closed at dawn so we were only able to tour the outside at first. Our first day consisted of going to the Colosseum, taking lots of pictures from the outside, listening to Rick Steves guide about the outside part, and then we had our million dollar picture taken with these guards outside of the Colosseum. They didn't tell us how much at first they were going to charge, but Joey and I just assumed it was based on gratuities, until the one guard at the end of our pictures asks for 20 Euro please. What a way to start off Rome!
We met up with our friend Laura who we met in Sevilla in our 2 week teaching program, as well as her boyfriend Jesse. We toured around with them for a while and their friend Cindy they were staying with in Rome to get more of a feel for the city. This was definitely my favorite place for food because since Cindy has been living in Rome since September, she knew the more authentic places to go eat. We sat down our first night enjoying some delicious pasta, pizza, bread, and wine!
Our Alice and Wonderland Hostel was so great that it offered complimentary breakfast each morning when a woman would wait for us to wake up, ask us if we would like coffee or tea, and there on the table would be a huge selection of hardboiled eggs, fruits, pastries, bread, cheeses, and juice (I knew this was going to be a great trip even after the rocky start). We were able to complete the whole Colosseum, Vatican City, and Spanish Steps inside and out the 2nd day. The best part of it was that Joanna and I had downloaded ahead of time Rick Steves podcast guides onto our ipods about the Colosseum and Vatican City so that we were able to listen throughout our own tours and understand everything we were seeing. {This is a great idea by the way if you are ever traveling on your own somewhere and don't want to pay for the tour guides}.
We were able to understand the whole history of the Colosseum by how the structure was built, rebuilt later when an earthquake hit, where the gladiators stayed underneath until they fought, what kind of performances were done there, how many deaths occurred there, how many people sat there at one time, and much more.
My favorite part of seeing Vatican City was the Sistine Chapel and how ornate and beautiful the ceiling was of Michaelangelo's work. He had painted the entire ceiling with detailed Genesis scenes as well as "The Last Judgment" scene on the ceiling above where the altar stood. The whole ceiling took about 4 years for him to complete. We were also able to look through some art museums and St. Peter's Basilica as well. The plaza outside of St. Peter's was definitely a sight to see at night time, plus with the decorations for Christmas time.
In Florence, we got there our first day after taking the train from Rome and arrived late in the afternoon. There wasn't much open late except this one museum we found. This was called the Opera Museum of the Duomo--which showed basically how they constructed the whole duomo area in Florence of the Bruneschelli's Dome, the Tower, the Cathedral, and the Baptistry. Just so happened that when we were almost done with the tour of the Museum we ran into one of my old psychology professors at Muhlenberg College! She taught me a psychology of women class my last semester at Muhlenberg and she was standing there right before me with her husband. She and her husband were on their Christmas vacation in Italy as well, and had been in Rome the exact same days as us, then Florence for the same amount of days, and been in the same exact museum as us the same time. I couldn't believe the coincidence :)
We were also fortunate enough to see two different exquisite art museums with very famous pieces (called the Uffizi and the Academia Museums). We weren't allowed to take any photos there either, but made up for it by having our Rick Steve guides with us on our ipods. Somehow this huge tour group of Germans kept following us into every single room and we couldn't get away from them. They would also look at the same exact paintings that Joey and I were looking at and surround us while we were trying so hard to listen to Rick Steve. Our last day in Florence was our nicest day since it didn't rain the whole time and we were able to climb up Bruneschelli's Dome--all 360 stairs? It was definitely worth the amazing view of the whole city though and good photo opportunity to bug people into taking our picture. By the end of the trip, we definitely had mastered the self photography though : )
Florence was the only place we managed to go out and explore the night life, which was definitely an experience to say the least. We weren't used to this going out at 10ish thing because the bars closed earlier we found out than in Spain. Usually in Spain, we have to start going out at about 12 or 1am to see any people, where the party starts to get going by about 4am. I went in saying to Joey, "Goal tonight Joey is to find me an Italian man" and nevertheless we end up meeting 2 Algerians that lived in Florence...so much for my Italian love who was going to tell me sweet nothings in my ear in the language of love. We ended up having a great time though going dancing and barhopping with Alessandro and Walter (we didn't much care for Walter's name and so we changed it to Eduardo).
Our last stop was little Pisa for a day and a half. We first arrived there and were told by the hostel that it was only 5 minutes walking from the airport/train station where we arrived. It had no further directions however, so we ended up calling Rocco our hostel man. He tried to explain in his little Italian accent, but we couldn't understand so well and so he said I'll be there in 2 minutes! I tell Joey that our hostel man Rocco is coming to pick us up and bring us to the hostel and all we could do was laugh after all we had been through in this trip already. There kept on being little old men pulling up to the curb in their cara, but none were Rocco. I kept telling Joey that when he got out of his car that we make sure he says our names first and that he's not just some random man trying to take us home.
We went there fully exhausted after 5 days of nonstop traveling and sight seeing so it was a perfect last stop for us. There wasn't too much to see there, except of course the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Cathedral/Baptistry, the river with pretty bridges, plazas, and churches that were mostly all closed when we went. We left at 10in the morning to do our route throughout Pisa, and we were back by 3:30 in the afternoon. We were definitely ready for our siesta time that we had lacked all week and some good pizza and beer at night.
Our first night in Pisa there wasn't any place open to eat around our hostel except this one pizza place that was closing by the time we had arrived. They felt so bad for us that they gave us some free leftover bread. The next night we went back to the same place and ordered real pizza this time and some beers to take back with us. Two minutes after leaving the pizza place we realized that we didn't have an opener for the beers...so we went back. We just simply asked for them to open our beers, but instead they included a plastic beer opener in our bags with our pizza haha. We of course felt real classy after that and walked back to our hostel with our amazing Italian pizza's, beers, and a good old movie to end our wonderful vacation.
This was very informative....glad you had fun:)
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