Every trip has to have something go wrong. No matter how short..there has to be some sort of minor hiccup that takes the perfection out a trip. But hey, thats what makes a trip an adventure, right? Well..our "minor hiccup" turned out to be more like a huge, monster burp that only your great uncle milton who ate too much at thanksgiving can make. As we walked into the Paris airport on Friday morning, I exclaimed "I can't wait to eat lunch in Rome!". Oh how I was forced to eat those words a few minutes later. When we tried to check in for our flight, we learned that, due to an airline strike in Rome, our flight was cancelled. No biggie..right? We'll just go on the next flight! Oh no. Not a chance. We were then put on a flight the next morning to Rome. Unfortunately..we had no idea how long this particular strike would last. Apparently in Europe its totally cool to just stop working and shut down major modes of transportation for any period of time. There have already been several metro strikes here in Paris so an airline strike (I still want my money back, Iberia) is totally ordinary behavior. Anyways, we decided that our best option was to find tickets on a sleeper train to Rome and skip the hassle of waiting for the strike to end. Easy, right? Again, no way jose. It seems that the online ticket purchasing for trenitalia just doesn't like to work. Fortunately, we befriended a group of three travelers that were suffering from our same predicament. Even more fortunately, one of these travelers happened to speak fluent French. The six of us headed down to the train ticketing station in the airport and discovered that there was only one seat available for the trip to Rome. But as I said..our new friend spoke French. If you can actually speak French like a French person here then everybody loves you. So naturally, the ticket man gave us a break and found us an "alternative" route to Rome. 180 euro's lighter and we were on our way...but our sleeper train was not awaiting us in Paris. Oh no. Mr. Tickets had a different location for us in mind to begin our journey. At first, we all believed we were heading to the south of France. I am really not sure why we were under this impression but I called my mom to tell her my what would be my first stop before Rome and she informed me that the city of Lausanne was in fact in Switzerland..NOT the South of France. Bummer. After a five hour train ride we arrived in the city of Lausanne and, as I said before..bummer. Switzerland..the land of taking no sides in international arguments..is one of the most boring countries I have ever been to. Granted, I was not too happy to be traveling there in the first place..but after spending five hours there I can say that I have fully satiated any underlying desire I might have had to spend time in that country. Our most enthralling find in Lausanne was that the mini coffee creamer we got at a restaurant had a picture of a mini-horse on it. Seriously. That was the most fun we had.
Finally, after waiting five hours in Lausanne we boarded our sleeper train to Rome at 10 pm. (We had been scheduled to arrive in Rome at 1 pm that day). Oh..and I forgot to mention that my roommate, Bryn, was turning 21 that very evening! Our plans to celebrate in Rome turned into plans to celebrate in our lovely, spacious, comfortable sleeper cabin. Can you read deep enough to feel the sarcasm there? The thing was tiny. Our one positive was that we were sharing the cabin with our new friends and not some randos! We heard a poor couple pleading with a train guy to switch them to an empty cabin because their flight to Rome was also cancelled and they were on their honeymoon! Oy. After hanging out for a bit and drinking some wine to celebrate Bryn's very first sip of alcohol, we decided it was time to go to bed. In a sleeper cabin, when one person decides this, everyone has to go to bed because the beds come out of the walls and you can no longer sit upright. I somehow ended up on the top bunk of the triple, come out of the wall style bunk beds, and rather enjoyed my view of the cabin below. I also enjoyed my view of the cabin ceiling, seeing as though I was about two feet away from it all night long.
After an incredibly restless and relatively sleepless night (the motion of a train does NOT rock you to sleep)..we arrived in ROME! Although we had heard that there was also a taxi strike in the city, we managed to escape that bout of bad luck and easily found a cab to take us to our hotel. Upon arrival, the man at the desk informed us that our room was not yet ready..but..(now say this in an italian accent)..I can see that you are tiiiiired, and so i will give you another roooom. Yesssss. Exhausted and slightly delirious, we made it to our apartment style room (whose refrigerator we could not figure out how to turn on) and fell into bed. I slept on the highest top bunk I have ever encountered but rested easily knowing that my adventure in Italy would finally be able to begin. I shall post the rest of our adventures soon!
