Italy!

How cool is it that I am sitting on a train writing this blog watching the Italian countryside go by!

We have arrived in Italy and luckily without any mishaps.  Well, maybe a couple.  We flew Norwegian from New York to Rome with an almost eight hour layover in London.  Originally we had talked about going into the city or to Brighton, but after walking around Manhattan with our backpacks the whole day prior and after a long night on the plane, we decided to just hang in the airport.  Unfortunately, there was no wifi access and all, literally ALL, of the plugs did not work.  That is so bizarre.  We found one plug near the toilets, so we sat on the ground next to the plug for an hour or so.  I'm sure people thought we were nuts. 

Our first mishap occurred getting off the plane in London.  Mark thought Patrick had grabbed Tali's bag when he got off ahead of us, but he had not.  We didn't realize that until we were almost to the next departure gate and had caught up to Pat.  So, Mark and Pat headed back up the gangway to get the bag.

Written by Patrick...
"Retracing our steps back to the plane we were greeted by several doors. The first one opened with a green button, so naturally the second would too. WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP we trip an alarm but no one comes. We push the door open that leads down to the plane and greet the crew and a few police officers. "YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO BE HERE, HOW DID YOU GET DOWN HERE? We let them know what we had done and they were quite friendly about it. Since we had broken the law there was "protocal to be followed" consisting of taking down our names and a brief story as to why we felt it was okay to do what we did. By the end of our appologies they were laughing and so were we.  If this had happened in the USA we would without a doubt have sat in a dark room being questioned for a long time. -MY bad my spelling and grams are horbs..."

So, I guess you could call that a mishap with a happy ending.  What wasn't a happy ending was that I left my awesome travel pillow on the plane!  I am still lamenting the loss.

Our last flight got us in Rome around 8:00pm. It was very nice being U.S. citizens as we were able to bypass all of the long lines for the Italian citizens. We walked right up to the immigration official and she stamped our passports lickety split without any questions or even a look at us.  Going through customs was a breeze as well since there was no customs!  What's with that?!  We walked right out the door to the taxi stand.  We took a 30 euro ride to our BnB near the airport.  I was freaking out when he dropped us off because it looked super shady.  I kept questioning him to make sure we were in the right place and he assured us that yes we were.  Much to my surprise the flat was very nice with ridiculously comfy beds.  The owner, never got his name, was very sweet and helpful.  He called
around to a bunch of pizza places trying to find us some food.  Thank you airlines for not feeding us anymore!  Or giving us a blanket or pillow during a transatlantic red eye flight! But, I digress. 

So, the owner drove Pat, Mark and Tali to the nearest McDonalds for food.  I have to say, it was not very good.  The bread was dry and the meat was questionable, but we were hungry, so... 

I woke up around 6:30am feeling pretty good, but looked forward to relaxing some more in bed.  I decided to get on Facebook and review our itinerary again.  Good thing I did!  For some reason I had  it in my head that we were leaving at 4:00pm, but NO, we were arriving at 4:00pm and leaving at 10:30am.  No more sleep for me, or for anyone else!  We quickly took showers and the owner graciously came over to pull together a quick breakfast and call us a taxi.  We had to take a taxi to
the airport in order to get a train to the train station.  With a little help and a bit of flubbing around, we managed to get ourselves on the right train to Padua (Padova in Italian).  We will be arriving in an hour after five hours on the train and I have really enjoyed the experience so far.  We are looking forward to arriving in the city we will call home for the next five nights.