Europe Trip Day 1
Oh my! What a wild and crazy time we’ve had so far. We were supposed to leave L.A. at 3:30. Didn’t actually leave until 4:00, flew through the night – hardly sleeping AT ALL – arriving in London at 9:30 a.m. which would have been 1:30 in the morning for us. We had a few hours to spare before catching our plane to Rome, so we had different options. The “easiest” way would have been to catch a “coach” (not called bus here) to another airport called Stansted Airport, but that would have taken us directly to the airport and since we had about 8 hours before our flight went out, we decided to do the adventurous thing and take the underground subway into the heart of London and do some quick sight-seeing thing before we left for Rome. Just figuring out where we were supposed to go and how to find things was a challenge – and that is even doing it in English.
Well, we finally figured out where the subway (called underground here) was and which one to take, so off we went. The underground does just that – goes underground most of the way, with occasionally popping up above ground. When it did that, we would glimpse sights reminiscent of Mary Poppins. Love it!
Our destination was Liverpool Street. It took us about a little over an hour (lugging suitcases) to get there. When we finally arrived it was crazy just to find our way to street level. We were about three levels underground. Of course, everyone around us knows exactly where they are going and how to get there and they are all in a hurry. A lot of the areas we had to go to had stairways (no escalators – they’re called “lifts” here). Of course, we had our heavy suitcases to lug up and down. But twice gentlemen stopped and asked us if they could help – Dale lifting one and these wonderful gentlemen lifting the other. Wow. One lady behind us had a baby and a stroller, so after helping me, these nice gentlemen walked back down the stairs and asked her if they could help her and then proceeded to do so. I’m so impressed.
At another point we had a big stairs to carry bags up, and again a nice gentlemen asked me (not five minutes after the last group had helped us) if he could be of assistance. This guy promptly took off with my bag and was flying ahead of me – faster than I could keep up. I thought, “Well, if he’s taking my bag – bye-bye, because I can’t keep up!” But no, he stopped at the top and waited for me. Wow. I’m sooooo impressed. I can’t imagine that happening in the States. We could surely take some lessons.
Well, when we finally reached the top level and walked outside I was so totally blown away I started to cry. I truly felt like I was walking onto a Hollywood set, except this was the real thing. We were in London!! All these wonderful old old buildings everywhere and double decker buses and the cutest little English-looking taxis all driving on the wrong side of the road. We were really in London. Astonishing.
The other most amazing thing here is that absolutely EVERYONE -- I mean EVERYONE speaks with an accent !!
We walked around the streets there (still lugging suitcases and backpacks and camera cases and whatnot) and enjoying every second of it. We stopped at an outside café and had some lunch. I looked at my watch, and it would have been 5:30 A.M.!!! our body-clock time.
After this short excursion, we took a train to the airport (about an hour ride). Once we got to the airport we discovered, much to our dismay, that our suitcases were too heavy. We were only allowed 15 kilos each (no one had bothered to mention this to us.) We had way over that in both. To pay for the extra would have been about $240. So we found a place that we could store one of our suitcases and then crammed – I mean CRAMMED – most of the stuff in that one, and then finally got the one suitcase down to 15 kilos. Quite a challenge. We were traveling on Ryanair which Dale lovingly calls the Wal-Mart of the airlines. Everything is cheap cheap cheap. Once we got our bags checked in then we literally had to walk I’d say 2 or more miles to get on our plane. Unbelievable.
The plane was a cattle car. Tiny seats crammed together. You couldn’t even make your seat recline at all. We had a two-hour flight ahead of us and this is after flying all night with very little sleep. We tried to sleep, but it was IMPOSSIBLE to get comfortable. They did offer food, but of course you had to pay outrageous prices for crummy food, so we declined. I had brought (on the wise advice of Eric) some granola bars, so we munched on those.
Finally we arrive in Rome. It’s now about 9:00 at night their time. We get to the terminal and we had just missed the bus to take us to our hotel (they don’t time things very well here). The next bus comes in around 45 minutes, so we wait. And now comes the language challenge. Some people do speak English here, but very little. Finding out where we are supposed to go and how to pay for it is extremely difficult. Again, this is without having slept the night before. And since it is late at night in Rome, most people have gone home and those that are left don’t seem too interested in helping you.
The other shocker – how expensive everything is. Of course the dollar is worth about half here and on top of that, everything is outrageously expensive. We haven’t had anything to eat and everyone is closed anyway and what is open is not very appetizing looking and would cost you an arm and a leg. Back to the granola bars. We finally broke down and bought a bottle of water (a SMALL bottle that cost about $3).
Our bus ride to the hotel is about another hour drive in another cattle car bus – totally uncomfortable crammed into tight seats with nowhere to put your carry-ons except your lap and no place to put your legs either.
The bus stops at a terminal that is about a two- to three-block walk to our hotel, but figuring out WHICH WAY to walk is another challenge with the language barrier. The bus driver didn’t speak any English, and he just kept rambling on in Italian and pointing in a direction and shaking his head up and down like, “of course you will find it – just go thataway.” Okay. Thataway we went. We could have taken a taxi, but our Scottish heritage just wouldn’t have allowed that and in the Sean Connery fashion of, “It’s a new ‘exshperiensh’ for me” we chose to do it the cheap way. Well, we finally found our hotel. I was thankful that Eric had found it on the internet for us before we left so I knew what it looked like. That helped.
Two tired tourist-looking Americanos arrived at Bettoja Nord Nueva Roma Hotel (still lugging suitcase – singular by now).
Our hotel room is very nice. It’s old but nice. It has a bedroom, bathroom and a sitting room. We’re on the third floor. Our bedroom has the cutest Romeo-and-Juliet-looking balcony with shutters that open like doors. The rooms are very small but have 14-foot ceilings. If they would have lowered the ceilings just a little and put that on the size of the rooms, we could have had rooms twice their size.
Well, we tried to crash, but our bodies are so mixed up by this time that they’re not sure what they’re supposed to do. We both thought we were going to have a problem going to sleep at first, but then we quickly discovered that we almost instantly went into a deep sleep, even with a big, noisy, what looked like, group of college kids’ party going on directly across from us and of course the honking and beeping of a big city in the streets below.
End of Day One. I’ll tell you tomorrow’s adventures – tomorrow :)
Oh my! What a wild and crazy time we’ve had so far. We were supposed to leave L.A. at 3:30. Didn’t actually leave until 4:00, flew through the night – hardly sleeping AT ALL – arriving in London at 9:30 a.m. which would have been 1:30 in the morning for us. We had a few hours to spare before catching our plane to Rome, so we had different options. The “easiest” way would have been to catch a “coach” (not called bus here) to another airport called Stansted Airport, but that would have taken us directly to the airport and since we had about 8 hours before our flight went out, we decided to do the adventurous thing and take the underground subway into the heart of London and do some quick sight-seeing thing before we left for Rome. Just figuring out where we were supposed to go and how to find things was a challenge – and that is even doing it in English.
Well, we finally figured out where the subway (called underground here) was and which one to take, so off we went. The underground does just that – goes underground most of the way, with occasionally popping up above ground. When it did that, we would glimpse sights reminiscent of Mary Poppins. Love it!
Our destination was Liverpool Street. It took us about a little over an hour (lugging suitcases) to get there. When we finally arrived it was crazy just to find our way to street level. We were about three levels underground. Of course, everyone around us knows exactly where they are going and how to get there and they are all in a hurry. A lot of the areas we had to go to had stairways (no escalators – they’re called “lifts” here). Of course, we had our heavy suitcases to lug up and down. But twice gentlemen stopped and asked us if they could help – Dale lifting one and these wonderful gentlemen lifting the other. Wow. One lady behind us had a baby and a stroller, so after helping me, these nice gentlemen walked back down the stairs and asked her if they could help her and then proceeded to do so. I’m so impressed.
At another point we had a big stairs to carry bags up, and again a nice gentlemen asked me (not five minutes after the last group had helped us) if he could be of assistance. This guy promptly took off with my bag and was flying ahead of me – faster than I could keep up. I thought, “Well, if he’s taking my bag – bye-bye, because I can’t keep up!” But no, he stopped at the top and waited for me. Wow. I’m sooooo impressed. I can’t imagine that happening in the States. We could surely take some lessons.
Well, when we finally reached the top level and walked outside I was so totally blown away I started to cry. I truly felt like I was walking onto a Hollywood set, except this was the real thing. We were in London!! All these wonderful old old buildings everywhere and double decker buses and the cutest little English-looking taxis all driving on the wrong side of the road. We were really in London. Astonishing.
The other most amazing thing here is that absolutely EVERYONE -- I mean EVERYONE speaks with an accent !!
We walked around the streets there (still lugging suitcases and backpacks and camera cases and whatnot) and enjoying every second of it. We stopped at an outside café and had some lunch. I looked at my watch, and it would have been 5:30 A.M.!!! our body-clock time.
After this short excursion, we took a train to the airport (about an hour ride). Once we got to the airport we discovered, much to our dismay, that our suitcases were too heavy. We were only allowed 15 kilos each (no one had bothered to mention this to us.) We had way over that in both. To pay for the extra would have been about $240. So we found a place that we could store one of our suitcases and then crammed – I mean CRAMMED – most of the stuff in that one, and then finally got the one suitcase down to 15 kilos. Quite a challenge. We were traveling on Ryanair which Dale lovingly calls the Wal-Mart of the airlines. Everything is cheap cheap cheap. Once we got our bags checked in then we literally had to walk I’d say 2 or more miles to get on our plane. Unbelievable.
The plane was a cattle car. Tiny seats crammed together. You couldn’t even make your seat recline at all. We had a two-hour flight ahead of us and this is after flying all night with very little sleep. We tried to sleep, but it was IMPOSSIBLE to get comfortable. They did offer food, but of course you had to pay outrageous prices for crummy food, so we declined. I had brought (on the wise advice of Eric) some granola bars, so we munched on those.
Finally we arrive in Rome. It’s now about 9:00 at night their time. We get to the terminal and we had just missed the bus to take us to our hotel (they don’t time things very well here). The next bus comes in around 45 minutes, so we wait. And now comes the language challenge. Some people do speak English here, but very little. Finding out where we are supposed to go and how to pay for it is extremely difficult. Again, this is without having slept the night before. And since it is late at night in Rome, most people have gone home and those that are left don’t seem too interested in helping you.
The other shocker – how expensive everything is. Of course the dollar is worth about half here and on top of that, everything is outrageously expensive. We haven’t had anything to eat and everyone is closed anyway and what is open is not very appetizing looking and would cost you an arm and a leg. Back to the granola bars. We finally broke down and bought a bottle of water (a SMALL bottle that cost about $3).
Our bus ride to the hotel is about another hour drive in another cattle car bus – totally uncomfortable crammed into tight seats with nowhere to put your carry-ons except your lap and no place to put your legs either.
The bus stops at a terminal that is about a two- to three-block walk to our hotel, but figuring out WHICH WAY to walk is another challenge with the language barrier. The bus driver didn’t speak any English, and he just kept rambling on in Italian and pointing in a direction and shaking his head up and down like, “of course you will find it – just go thataway.” Okay. Thataway we went. We could have taken a taxi, but our Scottish heritage just wouldn’t have allowed that and in the Sean Connery fashion of, “It’s a new ‘exshperiensh’ for me” we chose to do it the cheap way. Well, we finally found our hotel. I was thankful that Eric had found it on the internet for us before we left so I knew what it looked like. That helped.
Two tired tourist-looking Americanos arrived at Bettoja Nord Nueva Roma Hotel (still lugging suitcase – singular by now).
Our hotel room is very nice. It’s old but nice. It has a bedroom, bathroom and a sitting room. We’re on the third floor. Our bedroom has the cutest Romeo-and-Juliet-looking balcony with shutters that open like doors. The rooms are very small but have 14-foot ceilings. If they would have lowered the ceilings just a little and put that on the size of the rooms, we could have had rooms twice their size.
Well, we tried to crash, but our bodies are so mixed up by this time that they’re not sure what they’re supposed to do. We both thought we were going to have a problem going to sleep at first, but then we quickly discovered that we almost instantly went into a deep sleep, even with a big, noisy, what looked like, group of college kids’ party going on directly across from us and of course the honking and beeping of a big city in the streets below.
End of Day One. I’ll tell you tomorrow’s adventures – tomorrow :)
2 comments:
Whoops! I commented on the wrong post. :)
So glad you're having a wild ride! :) Hope you get some rest, Mama!
Love ya
Oh, and love the Sean Connery "exshperiensh" thing. Too funny!
Post a Comment