Anywho, here is the blog that I wrote on Monday!
Words cannot describe the weekend we had. VERY VERY last minute, Jess, Katelyn and I planned a weekend in Amsterdam and Germany. We literally bought the tickets the day before we were scheduled to leave (including hotel), which ended up being not the cheapest trip in the world, but still not as expensive as going to Oktoberfest in Germany.
So, here comes Friday morning. We leave at 8 am, so we can get to the earliest train to Pisa (where we were supposed to fly out of), even though our flight was at one o'clock pm we wanted to leave super early to give us some cushion time.
Everything is going great. We get to Pisa at around 10 am, ask for the nearest internet cafe so we can print our boarding passes (they charge an extra 40 euros a person if you don't print it out yourself), then head upstairs to print them out. Upon pulling up the email that contained the boarding passes on Jess' email, I spy something that makes me say “WHAT, WHAT, WHAT!!!!?!?!?!” Katelyn and Jess respond with an equally confused, “WHAT!”, then I point to the part in the email that says BOLOGNA airport. Not Pisa. Not anywhere near Pisa.
Freaking out, we ran down to the Ryanair counter, which told us that for an extra 100 euros we could get the next flight out to Frankfurt (since there is no way we could make it to Bologna in time for our flight). The only catch is that we would count as a “missed flight”, so to purchase them we had to wait till between 1 and 2 pm to buy the new tickets. So we hang out at the Pisa airport for a while, and take pictures like this:
At 1 pm we went back to the counter, only to find that the lady who told us the information was now off duty, and all the new people claimed that we couldn't buy the “missed flight” tickets because in order to do that you need to be at the same airport where the flight took off. Had we known that earlier, we could have made it to Bologna in time to do that, but now we're royally screwed. We lost money on both of our tickets, along as our 90 euro hotel room.
Spilling tears we exit the airport and decide to head back to Florence, where we can at least hop on a train that will take us somewhere exciting in Italy. We talked to our friend Paolo who is in the program and was currently traveling in Venice, so we decided to head up there and meet him (we wanted to go somewhere relatively cold, since all we had packed were clothes for rainy weather in Germany). When we got to Florence, we found the nearest internet cafe, book a night at the hostel, looked up the train schedule, then went to catch the next one that left in half an hour. Upon arriving at the train station the machines weren't working, so we waited in an almost hour long line to talk to a representative only to find that every single train to Venice is booked for the night.
We had never felt more defeated. Tears were shed, to say the least. We wandered aimlessly around Florence trying to find a place to stay only to find out that every hostel and hotel was also fully booked. Completely overwhelmed with loss, we decided to simply go home back to Siena, to find the best restaurant in Siena, and fill our sorrows with risotto, pasta, and wine.
Despite our epic fail of a weekend, we decided that the best way to look at the situation as a learning experience. Always have all three people check the itinerary, always DOUBLE CHECK. We saw it as money lost, but nothing we could really do about it but move on and consider it a small bump in the road of the many travels we'll have. We're sitting down and booking all the rest of our trips this week, so nothing is ever left unprepared again.
On another note, it's raining in Siena!!! It smells so good. It's the best first rain smell I've ever had the honor of smelling, because instead of smelling like fresh rain mixed with asphalt and car oil from the streets, it's purely fresh since there are hardly any cars in Siena. I love it. I find it so funny how big of babies Italians are about the rain. Italians are the complete opposite of people from Oregon or Washington (who will refuse to use umbrellas just because of their pride). Italians have absolutely no pride when it comes to rain. Stores will close, parties will be canceled, umbrellas will be pulled out, and people will remain inside if there is the slightest sprinkle outside. It's so amusing. I love walking in the rain, but if you walk in the rain you will find the streets almost deserted because people are afraid to go outside.
Edit: On Wednesday it POURED and I walked past at least 300 trillion (that's an exaggeration) people IN panchos WITH umbrellas, standing under doorways so they wouldn't get wet. HAH.
I love it though. It's so cozy. It is really cold though. I can already tell that I'm going to need more jackets, boots, sweaters, and long sleeved shirts. It's gonna get chilly.
No comments:
Post a Comment