Today/Yesterday (since it all kinda blurs together going
around the world, was a long one for sure. I started with my flight out of
Omaha at 5:45pm on Wednesday. That flight went to Detroit, where I had a one
hour layover time, and of course my flight landed at one end of the airport,
and my next gate was clear on the other side of this large airport. I really
had to hustle to get to the other side and grab some food for supper to take on
the flight. That flight was from Detroit to Paris, and it was a seven hour
flight, while you also gained 6 more hours from flying that way. It was about
11:20am on the 10th by the time my flight arrived, but
unfortunately, the “skyway” (the walkway from the plane into the airport) was “broken,”
so I ended up sitting in the plane for another 45 minutes or so. This would
have been okay if I had not had only about an hour and a half between flights.
Then going through customs in France was ridiculous… I first had to get my
boarding pass from the help desk, and she said that I was already late for the
check in time, but if I hurried, I could get on it. Yeah right, maybe if there
wasn’t a ridiculously long line at customs and I didn’t have to have all my
baggage checked again… This alone took about 30 minutes, so I missed that
flight. They put me on the next one to Rome, but that wasn’t for another couple
hours, so I chilled in the Paris airport for a little bit. When we finally took
off on that flight, which took off late, I finally landed in Rome! It was such
a relief, but I was confused since I could not find customs to actually check
my passport and stuff, so I just somehow ended up outside. I made my way over
to get transportation to the hotel and this went fairly well. I was told to
take the train, but when I got to the area to buy the ticket, the lady told me to
just ride this shuttle that would take me right by there. The shuttle bus
driver was a little crazy, just like about all the other Italian drivers. We
were in one of those tall Mercedes vans and he was just putting the petal to
the metal, riding people’s bumpers about 1 foot behind them, not necessarily
driving in the defined lanes (which apparently is acceptable here since others
were doing the same), and talking on the phone while driving this stick shift
van! It was quite the interesting time. A funny moment happened when he was
listening to the radio and these guys were speaking Italian and then all the
sudden, The Final Countdown by Europe began playing. The reason I thought it
was funny was because it was ironic that I was in Europe listening to Europe.
Haha! Anyways, then after dropping the other people in the shuttle off at their
hotel, he let me off and told me that my hotel was right down this street to
the left. Thinking that there would be a good indication for the hotel on the
street somewhere, I just wandered down it. I couldn’t find it anywhere down
that street, so I began asking around about it. I found the street that it was
located on, but couldn’t find the hotel. I wandered up and down that street
until I finally asked a policeman sitting in this random booth thing on the
side of the road. He then told me it was right down the street from me about 25
meters. I walked over that way, still not perceiving the location of the hotel
until he whistled at me and I pointed to these big black doors. Sure enough, there
was a little gold sign with our hotel’s name on it, Hotel Mimosa. I buzzed the
door and it unlocked. I walked in just as our whole group was standing there
with Dr. Erdogmus discussing the plans for dinner, just in time! I quickly
changed and we went out as a group to eat and then went and got gelato! I love
fruit and I love ice cream/frozen yogurt, and this was like the best of all of
those things. I got strawberry and lemon flavors, and it was delicious. Now I
am back at the hotel and ready to call it a long, tiring, eventful day.
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