The Forever Eternal Day of Eternal Foreverness
Guess what kids? I’m in Italy. It took a whole lot more that I thought to get here and I’ve now been through some pretty sketchy international situations, but I’m safe, I’m sound, and I’m jet-lagged like crazy.
Yesterday…I think it was yesterday…Monday Katie and I left for London at 9:15. Bag check and security went quite well, and the flight was enjoyable also. Every single member of the staff had a delicious accent. There was Jeff the Scotsman who served me tea with supper and the lady attendant who called me “madam” and asked if she could “collect my rubbish.” I ended up sitting smack between two people I didn’t know, but the older gentleman to my left was quite talkative. He spent his childhood in London, but now lives in Alabama. I was tempted to ask him WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU THINKING! but I didn’t. Instead I listened as he told me stories from his traveling salesman days. And when we flew over London getting ready to land he pointed out the London Eye and the Thames to me and told me tales of his childhood. He was very tickled at how excited I was to see London. Even from a tiny plane window. And believe me, I was excited. 
The London Heathrow airport was everything I expected and more! Absolutely gorgeous! Everything was easy and maneuverable and they had little trolleys for our luggage. We found our bus easily and some very funny conversation with our bus driver who gave us a hard time about our luggage. “Bloody hell! What have you got in here?!” It was funny.
Then we transferred to Gatwick. Or as we now like to call it, Crapwick. We went to a million different desks trying to find the right place to check BA luggage when you’ve just got off another plane. Each person just pointed us to another. Seriously it took us forever to do anything there. Then the security line was so long that we didn’t even attempt that for another three hours (we had a long layover.) So we sat in a cafe for hours.
Once we decided to go through security it all went even further down hill. And fast. First, I had two baggies full of 3 oz. liquids, which was fine for the first flight, but for some reason, not the second. So I had to run back out and get they bag THEY provided which was just a tid bit bigger, and stuff everything into it. Then when they actually sent my bag through, they just stared at it forever in the machine, and decided to make me unpack it. All of it. Whatever they were looking for, they didn’t find it, so they let me pass. But just when I though I had made it, Katie and I were selected for a random shoe check, so we had to take off our shoes and send them through yet another machine.
When we finally finished with security, we went out and sat in the main atrium. Apparently in Crapwick they don’t let you know which gate your flight is at until 40 minutes before takeoff. And then you’ve either got a 5 minute walk to gate 45, a 10 minute walk to gates 20-44 and 70-99 and a 15 minute walk to gates 46-70 and 100-120….or something like that. So we just sat and joy of all joys, discovered that my train ticket was missing! I don’t know how or when or who, but it was gone. So we spent the next hour or so running around to security and information desks, and checking our flight status on the gigantic board. We took turns guarding the luggage. THEN, to make the day even better, our flight was delayed an hour.
From 17:30 to 18:30. And we were to be told the gate number at 18:05. So we sat more. Well, 18:05 came and guess which gate we were at. That’s right. Gate 104. A nice fifteen minute jaunt. Well, we really booked it, so I think we got there in less than ten minutes, but when we did arrive, it was to the news that we were delayed another 15 minutes. Yay. So I took pictures of the wonderful Gate 104 of Crapwick, London and sat. Again. And when we were finally able to board the plane? They decided to fuel it (probably a good idea!) and we sat there for another 40+ minutes while they did that.
So two hours later than expected, we were on our final flight. Now just to sit for the 2 hours of air time. Hoorah. The day seriously lasted FOREVER. It went by slower than molasses in the dead of winter. But Katie and I took short naps and eventually we did land in the Pisa International airport. Not what you’d expect from the fancy schmancy name. We decided they should rename it to the Pisa-crap Airport. We eventually found a lady who told us to take bus 21 from the airport to Pisa Centrale. But we couldn’t find bus 21 or where to wait for bus 21 or anywhere that said anything about bus 21 so we just sat, and when it came, half an hour later, and we drug our luggage onto it. I thought the man was going to kill us with his driving, *A feeling now quite familiar when in Italian vehicles.* He took all these wicked back roads with more than 90 degree turns. It was insane and I was very glad to get off at the Train Station.
That is, until we realized that it was closed. No more humans present to even attempt to speak to. AND we had missed our train by and hour due to our delayed flight. So we muddled through buying tickets on an italian machine and then scrambled to find the correct platform. But we didn’t really understand what or where the ticket was telling us, so we made an educated guess and chose platform 2. However, to get to platform 2 you must go down a flight of stairs. Then, back up another. With our luggage, that was a nightmare. A very painful, very difficult nightmare. Just you try hauling 164 pounds up some stairs. Actually don’t. It’s really not fun. But once we got there we sat. Our new favorite passtime. Our train wasn’t scheduled to come till 1:12 AM. Party, right? Then, to make the day even better, after reading a million signs and talking to some people, we discovered that trains don’t run after midnight. We had bus tickets. Buses pick you up from the plaza out front. Where we had just come from. So we lugged our stuff BACK down and BACK up and OUT front where we had been dropped off and HOUR ago and we sat.
It was then that we met these two American guys and, despite their colorful language, they were genuinely nice and we felt better knowing that they were headed in the same direction. There was some confusion as to where to actually wait for the bus, but at 1:12, one showed up, and we hopped on, not knowing that we had just signed on for the scariest ride of our lives. Literally, I thought we were going to, as one of the boys said, “pull a Titanic” and split in half. Not to mention that the headlights kept going out… But none of this phased the driver who barreled on at breakneck speed. At one point in time he did, however, feel the need to take a smoke break, so we pulled over at some random stop and he got out, lit up, and chatted with some people. For FIFTEEN MINUTES.
When we finally got to Firenze SMN, I just wanted to be DONE. But no one was there to pick us up. So. Katie got on the phone and called Silvio from the school and he said they had been down there, but they had just left. We waited, and 30 minutes later, they returned and loaded our luggage and we were on our way to the school.
Several sketchy roads and wicked turns later, we went up a very massive hill. At the top the driver turned around, “Dis is Villa Aurora.” Gorgeous! But once we got inside and had to take a million stairs (we’re on the top floor which is the third, but I swear we go up 5 flights of stairs…) we were thoroughly disappointed. We were showed our room—tiny. ugly.—and then left alone. And we wanted nothing more than to catch the next flight home. Seriously. I literally set a two day trial on it which is still in action. If I don’t love this place in two days, I’m going home.
By this time it was, like, 4:30 am. The day had lasted an eternity and we hadn’t slept in 40+ hours. We were sad and tired and angry, but we decided to sleep it off, and hoped the new day would bring a better prospective.
It did.
