Planning Italy

Well, it has been a hectic past few days. I just finished packing to leave for Italy tomorrow, and surprisingly, my backpack is lighter than it was when we went to Paris the first time! My packing skills have improved (aka I have learned from the soreness of my back).  Needless to say, getting to Paris has been a bigger ordeal than I had originally imagined. We have been planning this trip for a few weeks, and apparently, the people of France were planning to strike at the exact same time. We found this out last week when the strikes started (then they took a break and started back up yesterday), but all you can do is wait and see if you will be affected, because you never know how big the manifestations will be. 

The plan has been to leave Thursday, come back the following Tuesday. We get Monday off from school, so we would only miss a few classes (Friday is an easy day). So this past Tuesday, we checked in online for our 2 flights (there and back), printed our boarding passes, and printed dozens of good maps of various things in Rome/Pompeii that Rick Steve’s (a wonderful travel helper) gave us for free online! He writes travel books, guides, gives classes on travelling, takes travel groups too, and is the most entertaining, useful, theoretical travel companion. I borrowed his book of Europe from a friend, and it is most enjoyable to read, and packed with useful information and shortcuts! He also has free podcasts for your iPod that are tours of various famous monuments and sites (we downloaded 12 different ones!).

Well I got going on Rick Steve's, but back to the day. After printing all that, Chelsea and I headed to town to find super compact umbrellas for our trip, and then headed back. My Volleyball was cancelled…again…sad face. For the sake of being a healthier person, I hope the strikes stop soon! The school was blockaded for a few days this week too, more vacation for French students!

So get back to my room after all this and suddenly get a text from Genesis “Our Flight has been cancelled”. WHAT. I text Chelsea, then look into it online. Sure enough, the Air Traffic Controllers at the Airport we were flying out of were going to be striking on Thursday and Ryan Air had to cancel our flight. We could choose 2 options from them. Get on the next available flight for free, or refund. We looked and the next flights were already booked, so refund was the only option. But we wanted to go to Italy! So the next option to get there? Train. How long does it take? 19 hours total. Did we want to do that? YES. We go from Caen to Paris. 2 hour wait. Paris to Rome. There was a train leaving Thursday afternoon so we decided that would do nicely. We planned to wake up and run over to the SNCF (train) office in town the next morning.

So we did just that. I explained to my teacher what was going on and she understood my urgency. So off we went. However, the train was full!! NOOOO. Next train out was on Friday afternoon. We said we would think and come back. After deliberating, we decided that we really had no choice! After all our planning and booking of hostels (and a return flight!), we decided that even though we would lose a full day, we had to get to Italy! We went back to the SNCF office and booked the train.

Now, just classes, packing, and waiting. And that brings us to now. I checked the status of our trains online, and from what I can tell they are running, but I won’t rest assured until we are actually on the 2^nd train from Paris to Rome, with it moving. Haha.

I don’t think I mentioned this in my last blog, but I got a package from my parents! After a big kafuffle with the shipping company wanting me to fax them this paperwork to Paris (where they held my package hostage), it finally arrived! I got peanut butter, Flintstones vitamins, my converse shoes (they are insanely popular over here), winter jacket, Laura Pennington’s French Dictionary, some make up I forgot, and a sweater! I don’t think I covered everything. It was so lovely to get, and I have been enjoying my peanut butter, among other things, all week. Well, next blog, I will either be in Italy, or sadly wishing I could have been.