I was keeping some semblance of a journal, but ended up skipping a couple days here and there, and by here and there...I mean I skipped Amsterdam, Prague and Paris...oops. But hey, you've got Iceland and Florence to read about!
I have lots of photos to make up for it, though.
I also have lots of little doo-dads and hinky-jinkies to post up.
Get ready for the most intense series of late blog posts you've ever encountered.
EPISODE 1: READING WHAT HAPPENED
Monday August 31
Packed, repacked then packed again. Stressed, restressed and stressed again! I managed to be the first of the four of us to break down and cry thanks to Icelandair’s fantastic carry-on luggage weight limits and strict enforcement of said limits. One member of the team left her passport at home, so we had some waiting to do. Luckily though, we arrived at the airport 3 hours before our flight left, and it was at the baby airport. Our flight was smooth as ice on a baby’s bottom sitting in a vat of butter, though the seats could’ve used some adjustment, such as padding or taxi driver seat beads. Either would’ve sufficed. We flew out at 7:30pm Minneapolis/St Paul time, then arrived in Iceland at 6:20am Iceland time, which was about 1:20am MSP time. NOT AWAKE! We then had 10 hours of time to kill before our connecting flight to London…which seemed like a lot and oh, it was.
Tuesday, September 1
Apparently nothing in Iceland opens until 10 or 11am so we had some time to kill in the middle of what was basically nowhere. The capital, Reykjavik was an hour away by taxi or bus, but the buses didn’t start running until 11. Also, it was cold and since the clothes I had packed in my carry-on were now checked luggage and on their way to London, I had nothing to keep me warm besides my uber-hip flannel shirt. We ended up sleeping uncomfortably for a few hours, then making our way to Reykjanes which used to be called Keflavik until just recently. 5 minute cab ride, 1500 Kronas later, we were left in the cold to fend for ourselves. Ate some lunch, then proceeded to carry our much too heavy bags around this little town for a while, take a few pictures and marvel at all the much too gorgeous Icelandic people surrounding us. The Icelandic airport is probably a bit larger than the tinytown HHH airport in MSP, but it was still quite small and very quiet. We decided that it reminded us of Ikea, as everything is in Icelandic (I know, Ikea is Swedish. But have you seen Icelandic? They're practically one in the same) and then there is English right below it. The signs were also all very cute and simple, as they are at Ikea. A lot of the shops inside closed around 3:00 or 4:00 then didn’t open the rest of the time we were there, yet there were still other shops that remained open. We took another nap, undisturbed, then proceeded to go through passport control and head to London.
Our flight into Heathrow airport arrived around 8:30pm, or as the Europeans say 20:30. We then got on the underground to head to Kings Cross Station, which is a 50 minute ride from Heathrow. We each had at least 3 large, heavy bags with us. Let’s just say we weren’t the popular kids at lunch. We easily took up 10 seats altogether, and proceeded to do as bobbleheads do and fall asleep on and off the entire journey there, being woken every so often by the recorded voice telling us to “Mind the gap” as people would get on and off the train. We made sure to heed such warnings and lugged our luggage through the people. Up the stairs (because we didn’t see the lift until the last batch) then into the streets of downtown London to get to our hostel, The Clink.
We had some difficulty finding it since it was on King’s Cross Road and next to a Travelodge, which is much different than King’s Cross Bridge and the other Travelodge…which was one block away. Arriving at the hostel gave us relief, that is, until we saw the large set of steep concrete stairs that needed to be climbed in order to finally reach our destination. Done and done. Checked in, then missed noticing the lift again and dragged all our luggage up the stairs (only one flight) then got into our room, which was a tiny, tiny room with bunk beds and just enough floor space for our 10-12 bags. Nothing too exciting happened that night- we went to get some food and stumbled across a pizzeria then inhaled that deliciousness and headed back to the hostel. Shared 30 minutes of internet between the 4 of us, which let me tell you, isn’t enough. Showered then passed out.
Wednesday, September 2
Wake up, eat breakfast (for free! Only free thing so far, btw) check out, drag all our luggage again back to the train station, find a place to store it, then sit and wait and wait for it to be our time to finally leave. We had to check out by 10, and our train didn’t leave until around 1:00 so we had plenty of time to kill. Luckily we were able to use that time productively to get cell phones, so we felt like real humans again and we were back in the world. Took the train from London under the English Channel through part of France, and ultimately to Brussels where we had a 50 minute layover until we hopped on another train to Amsterdam. We were surprised by how lax Brussels was, as in, there was no customs, no passport information collected, etc…Until we got to Amsterdam and they didn’t even check our tickets when we boarded the train or at any point in our trip, and there was nothing whatsoever in the realm of security or check-in. London, we have found, is the most strict about all of these things.
September 3-7: MISSING CHRONICLES
Tuesday, September 8
MUCH. TOO. EARLY. MUCH. TOO. LITTLE. SLEEP. Let me tell you about our train ride. Tiny, smelly and noisy. We were bunked with two older men, one of which at first seemed like he was going to be a bit too talkative, but instead just ended up being a bit too awkward. The other was an Italian man who kept to his upper bunk, yelled on the phone for a bit, then passed out (probably from the exhaustion of his conversation). It got dark a lot quicker this time than the last train ride, so we basically sat in silence for a bit, then went to bed. Most of us decided to “rough it” and go to bed sans washing our faces/brushing our teeth/changing into our pajamas. Which was juuust fine, since we had to wake up at 5:40am and be off the train at 6:20am. As soon as bedtime fell, that’s when the fun began. Rudolph (Kelly gave him that name) started coughing every 20 seconds, on the second…in his sleep…the entire night. At first, I tried to think of positive things about his coughing, such as, “Well, at least I know he’s alive” which turned into “At least I know I’m alive since I know he’s alive” then it just turned into “Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if I didn’t know if he was alive or not”. The coughing persisted through the entire night, thank you. The. Entire. Night.
Then we got to wake up ultra early, and get to Florence ultra early, and get to our hostel ultra early, and find out that we couldn’t check in for another 6 hours so we proceeded to be ultra vagabonds for the next period of time. We found a tiny café, got some pastries and watched Italian MTV for a spell, then made our way over to McCafe (that’s right, they have an actual McCafe in Italy), found a table in the farthest corner, and 2/4 of our group passed out heads on the table immediately. Kelly and myself sat in a daze of confusion and delirium for a bit, then after a while of uneventful time passing, the group was reunited in consciousness yet again. We were then finally able to check into the hostel, we changed, we left, and we took a bus tour to Fiesole, which is an area just outside of Florence, up in the mountains…which is all I can tell you since I was either asleep or completely unable to remember any fact given to me on the whole tour.
Later on, we met up with some friends who are studying in Florence for the semester, went to dinner, tried our best at speaking Italiano (aka ordering in Italian), and ate much too much food for our own good.
Wednesday, September 9
We did a lot, yet we didn’t accomplish anything. We had no idea where any of the things we really wanted to see were, such as David, fake David, and some fresco of the Last Supper. We walked and walked and walked but really, just had no idea where we were going. We didn’t have a clue what building these things were located in or near, so we asked for some Italian guidance but were left thoroughly confused and bewildered. So, we went to where we thought we were supposed to go, and one building closed at 1:50 (it was 3:00 when we go there I believe) and it ended up not being the right building at all. The other building closed at 12:00 and was only open Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, so luckily we had another day to take care of that business. We still had no idea where David was, since our not so helpful handy dandy map didn’t get that job done. But the most important part of this day of course, was the bit of shopping we managed to do, and I use “bit” loosely. Per my request, we made a stop at Pucci, and I picked up my very own piece of Pucci. It’s currently still wrapped, seeing as it took two people to complete my purchase: one to wrap it and the other to ring it up. The woman who wrapped it up took longer than the woman with my card if that tells you anything. It’s ready to withstand a nuclear blast, and I’m sure it would be a nice bomb shelter for a family such as The Borrowers. I’ll unwrap it at a later date when I have some time to kill and a few sharp tools handy…and maybe a blowtorch.
Before we decided to get ready for the evening, we decided that it would be a really good idea to climb to the top of the Duomo. I knew it wouldn’t be good for many reasons: a) I’m claustrophobic, b) It’s an old European church, c) The stairs would be tiny and spiraly and awful for someone who’s afraid of being trapped in small dark places. I was talked into it, and I thought I could do it, but when time came…bad news bears. This girl got about…3 minutes in…and started her climb to a panic attack. I tried to press on, but it just seemed to be getting tighter and smaller and darker and steeper, etc… We got about 2/3 of the way through before I had to call it quits and climb my way down to freedom. Sweet, sweet freedom. Then, I spent the rest of the night with a slight shake to my body still getting over the fear of what I had just done, or attempted to do.
Later that night, we were to meet up with our friends that we went out with the previous night and visit Andy (Kelly’s high school friend) at the Villa he’s studying at. We meet up with Amanda (who is looking much more put together than the 4 of us who are wearing dirty wrinkled clothes and haven't had an ideal proper shower in far too long) and hop on a bus to Sesto, which is just 20 minutes or so outside of Florence and we arrive at his villa, Corsi-Salviati. From the outside, it didn’t look like much. From the entryway, it didn’t look like much…from the courtyard, the gardens and between the fountains however, was a different story. Apparently it used to belong to part of the Medici family back in the hayday, and it was easy to believe. Statues, beautiful gardens, lovely pathways and ponds filled with lilypads were what we encountered when we got to the heart of the matter. Even the inside of the building was beautiful (well, duh). One of the classrooms that they have is just a giant fresco painting- on the walls and ceiling. We couldn’t see the bedrooms, but I feel like that’s probably ok, we were all in shock and jealousy already. For dinner, we went to a pizzeria and again had to practice our Italian when ordering, and since it wasn’t in Florence, it wasn’t set up for tourists (aka the menu was not in English in any way shape or form), so we made our best guesses as to what kind of pizza we ordered for the meal and were all pleasantly surprised. I ended up getting preeetty much what Americans would call a meat lover’s pizza…including some sort of sausage, prosciutto, and salami. Fabulous. Then we went over and got the best (in my opinion…others might beg to differ) gelato for the entire trip. It was busy with locals, and they were all croweded around a TV set up outside airing the football (soccer) game between Italy and…I have no idea, so I’m not even going to try to guess who they were playing. The atmosphere was fun, the people were friendly, the gelato was cheap (and did I mention ultra fantastic?) and it was a perfect night.
Thursday, September 10
Andy. Breakfast. David. Last Supper. Poop Street. Shopping. Shopping. Bye Andy. Shopping. Amanda’s. Market. Dinner. Bye Amanda. Train Station. Train. Awesome. Goodnight.
Friday, September 11
Arrived in Paris! Got an ultra sweet deal on the train- it ended up being just the 4 of us this time, because we made friend with our train master (real title unknown), Tostada (real name unknown). We were supposed to share our compartment with an older couple who were well into their 80’s at least…not exactly something I want to wake up next to on a train. Or anywhere, really. But anyways, Tostada took care of business and put them in a different sleeping compartment…or threw them off the train; we don’t really know the hard facts.
We took the metro from the train station, oh except we didn’t, since the metro station right across the street from the train ran out of paper tickets to spit out so we had to walk to the next stop. Got our tickets from a guy who didn’t speak French or Spanish…only Italian and English, which was convenient for us but inconvenient for his life working in a Paris metro station. Got off the metro, turned 2 corners and found ourselves face to face with our hostel…finally an easy one! It was daytime, close to check in time, and 2 feet away from the metro? Whaaaaaaaaaat is going on, Paris?
Once at the hostel, we discovered the beauty that is free wifi and got connected, showered (much needed, trust me), and set forth towards the center of the city (our hostel was so far north that it wasn't even on our map)
September 12-14: ALSO MISSING
Stay tuned for Episode 2: The Photographs (Coming real soon...you won't have to wait long at all)
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