Venice, the City on an Island.

(Well, I know this is soooo late, but when the trip ended, school took off, and I just never had time to post this! So. Venice.)

I woke up this morning, and had no voice! (I will now pause and allow all you who know me well to have your moment of laughter.) I mean, I could still talk, but only quietly, and it kinda hurts. Not the best for traveling around foreign cities, especially ones that are likely to be crowded with tourists. Oh well!

After that discovery, we made our way to the train station. As we were staying in Mestre, on the mainland, and not Venice proper, we hopped on a train for the ten minute train ride across the (canal? Channel? Sea? What’s between the island Venice is on and mainland Italy? I’m not really up on my Venetian/Italian geography) way to Venice.

Venice is like…a Disney movie. Or a little toy village. It looks like someone made a life-size model of the perfect cartoon city. It’s beautiful! And also very touristy (at least the part we were in). It was also quite small. The streets are narrow and wind in and out between buildings and over canals (no straight lines to be found anywhere) and it still only took an hour to cross from one end to the other. There were no cars in this part of Venice (although there is a road onto the island; the train runs parallel to it for a bit, but they seem to stay out of the main part of the city. Or at least, out of the tourist part), and the water is so so blue! It’s beautiful!

One thing Venice is not is cool. There was some hope that Venice might provide a break from the heat we experienced in Rome, and indeed it was a bit cooler, but alas! it was still quite hot! I even managed to get a little sunburned, and there was at least one instance of dunking my head under a fountain to cool off in the middle of the afternoon.

Anyway, back to the tourists: they were everywhere! Crowds of them. We were supposed to meet the missionary girls (whom we met on the train the previous evening) at San Marco’s Square at noon. (Which we failed to do—we were running late, and then it took ages to get across the city. Although we never would have found them even had we been on time. San Marco’s was packed!) At first I was wondering how we were going to manage that, since the only straight path from the train station to the Square is water taxi, which costs something like €16 (too expensive!). But it turned out that all we had to do was follow the crowd. There were signs occasionally too, but we never really had to look at them. For the most part, the stream of people ahead of us lead us right where we wanted to go.

And all along the way there were little shops and kiosks everywhere selling everything from fresh fruits and vegetables (which we were so grateful for! This whole trip, it seems, has been bread, bread, bread. We looked for fruit everywhere and we keep failing to find any. And here is Venice, the answer to my prayers. I bought three or four huge apples!), to murano glass, to porcelain masks. So many masks! I never knew that those pretty porcelain masks people sometimes hang on their wall originally came from Venice. Most of them were pretty simple and inexpensive, but a few shops we passed had these huge, elaborate masks on display that were just beautiful!

There were also a lot of large, elaborately decorated religious buildings. The weird thing is that the city is so closely packed together, and the buildings are so tall (the city has expanded upward, not outward. The disadvantage of building on an island, I suppose), that these beautiful religious buildings would seem to suddenly appear out of nowhere. We’d be walking along, and turn a corner, and all of a sudden there would be this gorgeous church with all these carvings and columns and spires.

We also saw a lot of gondolas. Which was way cool. The artsmanship that goes into one of these boats is just incredible. Each one is perfectly polished and decorated with gold metalwork, with fancy rugs or pillows over the seats. I had hoped to ride one, but they’re way expensive, so I just looked at them (and took pictures of them) and then kept right on walking.

I finally got to try Italian pasta! I have been told time and again not to expect much from Italian food in Italy, because it is so different from Americanized Italian food. But actually, I didn’t think there was too much of a difference. I debated for awhile about whether to order fettuccini (one of my favorite Italian dishes back home), or an alfredo noodle dish. I went with the alfredo (because I like it better than tomato sauce, which is what came on the fettuccini dishes) , while Yvette ordered the fettuccini. Weirdly, the fettuccini noodles were super wide and had crinkly edges, while my plain noodles looked just like those American restaurants call fettuccini. It tasted a bit different (the cheeses are way better over there, but it was a bit strong in that sauce), but I really liked it.

I will say that I have never seen ham used the way Italians use it. They put slices of super thinly cut ham on top of my noodles, which was odd. I had also had ham on my pizza in Rome, and had expected small pieces like we have on Hawaiian pizza, but instead got big squares in that same thinly cut, almost transparent manner. Still, it tasted good.

We ended our time in Venice by sitting on the steps of the train station and listening to a very charming man from Chile sing and play the guitar while his female companion played the bongo drums. It was a nice way to relax and cool down before heading back to the hotel to pack and prepare for our flight back to London.

I have to say that while I am sad to be leaving Italy, which has completely captured my heart (well, Rome has, anyway. If it didn’t already own it before), but it will be nice to find a place to settle for the next week before moving into the residence hall for the semester. All this traveling is tiring!

Goodbye, Italia!

Rome: The Short Continuation

Waking up this morning was so sad, because for the first time on this trip, Yvette and I found a room with a lovely soft bed. We’re still waiting to find a place with equally lovely, fluffy pillows; they’ve all been very flat so far.

We spent our morning doing house-keeping: buying tickets to Venice, arranging a place to stay, etc. We ended up buying plane tickets from Venice to London on Sunday, because trains are even more expensive! After that we needed to buy some luggage: me because my shoulder is going to fall off if I keep having to cart that duffel around, and Yvette because her bag exceeds the weight limit of the airline. Once all that was done, we could finally go sight-seeing!

Today’s tour was of the Vatican Museum/Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter’s Basilica. I have never been in a museum so hot! Saw a lot of mostly unimpressive sculptures (although I did learn that the Roman’s painted all their statutes, and that, instead of the empty eyes they always seem to have, they actually inserted glass or crystal eyes to bring the statues to life. Saw an example and was so impressed. It completely changes the look!), some weird things, heard a lot about the popes, and then , the main event: The Sistine Chapel. So beautiful! I’ve seen pictures, but really, there are just no words. I was very disappointed that I couldn’t take any pictures in there, but it’s not allowed.

The rest of our day consisted of running back to the hotel, grabbing our stuff, and booking it for the train station for the trip to Venice. We had some difficulty, because the ticket guy, when we bought our tickets, told us we could sit anywhere, but the train was actually a sleeper train to Munich. We asked where we should sit, and the train employee said the last five cars. But most of those were sleepers too! So we asked the guy on the 3rd to last car, and he said the last car. We finally got to that car, with 10 minutes until the train was supposed to leave, and sat in two seats in the a compartment in the middle…which two women then came and told us were there assigned seats. There are assigned seats on this train?! Eventually, a nice guy explained to us that our “sit anywhere” tickets mean that we actually got the jump seats that fold out of the wall in the aisle. Uncomfortable! By the time the train, an hour late, finally took off, I had a migraine. And it is noisy sitting in the aisle. After about an hour and a half, we moved into an empty compartment, figuring we’d move if we needed to, but we were tired of being in the aisle while there were still seats available.

At the next stop, 3 really nice girls who are missionaries in Moldova (on vacation) joined us in our compartment, and we spent the rest of the trip keeping each other entertained. Since all five of us got off in Mestre-Venice, we made plans to possibly meet in San Marco’s Square the tomorrow to go in together for a gondola ride (because they are rumored to be quite steep). So tomorrow: Venice, and maybe gondolas!

My Heart Belongs to Rome…

Sleeper trains are a pain in the backside! There’s not much space when you cram 6 people into one tiny car in 6 tiny bunk beds. Yvette and I were fortunate enough to be assigned the top bunks, so at least we had enough room to sit up, but it was quite stuffy. Also, we kept waking up every time the train stopped. It was one of those automatic things, like when the car stops at the end of a long trip and the lack of movement wakes sleeping passengers. Only we still had hours and hours left to go. And people (*cough*males*cough*) apparently have more difficulty…erm…hitting the target, so to speak, when the floor is moving beneath them, because the bathrooms got really gross really fast.

The problem with this (at least when you are particular about hygiene) is that in most of Europe, apparently, use of public restrooms costs about 3 Euros. (Oh America, with your free toilets every which way, I do so miss you!!! ) This is especially problematic when you don’t have any Euros on you! So it was a pretty high priority for us to find a place to stay (and thereby get access to a bathroom) as soon as we got off the train.

We found a quaint little hotel, with free wifi (finally!!!), and got ourselves situated. We were then ready to go play tourist. The receptionist guy was particularly helpful, giving us a walking map and telling us what our options were within a ten minute walk of the hotel. Because it is my lifelong dream to see it, and because it was so so so close, the coloseum was our choice. (meaning I casually said, “the coloseum’s pretty close.” And Yvette said, “yeah, we can do that” and I said “you’re so my best friend!” I might have thrown a little happy dance in there somewhere too.) But before we could go sightseeing, we had to find food.

The thing to understand here is that Yvette and I had been so stressed and busy on this trip up until this point, that we hadn’t been very hungry. We were averaging about 1 “meal” a day (usually a sandwich) supplemented by a lot of water , a little chocolate, and some snack bars. By the time we got settled in Rome and relaxed, we were starving. So off we went to see if all the stories we’d heard about Italian food was true. We found a little restaurant not far from our hotel (not difficult to find) that wasn’t terribly expensive (pretty difficult) and also allowed us to sit down (in combination with previous quality, extremely difficult). Yvette ordered the lasagna, and I ordered a pizza, because I’d heard they were amazing in Italy. Both were actually extremely good, despite the very oily quality of the lasagna, and the extremely thin (think tortilla) crust of my pizza. Also, the restaurant was really cute.

Then it was off to play tourist. The walk was not terribly exciting, although we decided we like the architecture here in Rome almost as much as that in Paris, and we both love the feel of the city. The weather here is HOT! right now, so we were sort of eyeing the gilato longingly as we went, but passed it by like good little tourists who are poor, and lack the correct form of currency anyway.

The first sight of the coloseum was…unexpected. We turned a corner, thinking we still had quite a walk ahead of us, and there it was. I…might have jumped around a bit. I might have been a little bit in love with Rome even before (like, years before) I ever stepped foot on Roman soil. So I might have been a little excited. Pictures may have been taken. Then we…walked for awhile. We were just planning to buy tickets to get inside and then look around a bit, but when we got there, there was a tour being offered for something like four Euros more (a piece) than the normal ticket price and, as they also accepted both pounds and dollars (which we did have), and were including a tour of the nearby palatine hill, we were all over that.
Our tour guide, who was Roman, was determined to convince us that the Romans weren’t all bad, despite the horrible things that took place in the coloseum. He pointed out the brilliance of the architecture, the niches in the walls where the posts holding up the cloth used as sun protection for spectators used to be mounted, the fact that there was always free food for all spectators (even the poor ones), and that the only people killed were those condemned to die anyway. Personally, I didn’t feel any better about their method of granting that death, nor the bloodthirsty way the entire culture was obsessed with watching it, but it was interesting to hear the facts and stories from a completely new perspective. And I did learn a few things I hadn’t heard before, like the fact that the Romans chose the plays and stories they reenacted in the coloseum for a reason: each one was specifically tailored to the crime committed by the person being executed. For example, a favorite for the execution of Christians was a reenactment of the punishment of Prometheus (the god who gave fire to humans) because he committed the ultimate betrayal against the other gods and was punished by them. The Romans thought it was fitting that Christians, who committed the ultimate betrayal of refusing to worship Caesar, should be similarly punished.

The building itself is amazing. When you first come into the coloseum, you step right into the spot where the emperor’s box used to be, which I thought was interesting. They’ve placed a cross there to commemorate all the Christians who were killed in the coloseum (I found its placement extremely ironic). A lot of the upper levels are missing due to an earthquake back in the day, but they have reconstructed part of the floor and left the rest of the underground chambers exposed so that you can see what it looked like underneath. They also let you look at it from two different levels, so you can see the underground stuff more clearly.

Anyway, after the coloseum, we had a few minutes wait until our tour of the palatine hill was to start. I snagged a water bottle, and Yvette got a chocolate gilato that she said was just horrible. She ate it anyway (because it was HOT!) and we spent the next few minutes fending off vendors trying to sell us scarves, fans, necklaces and parasols. It was a little difficult because they pretend not to understand English very well until someone actually buys something from one of them, and then, all of a sudden: clarity!

Palatine hill was very different. For one thing, I had never heard of it before, so everything I was seeing and hearing was brand new. Supposedly, this hill was where Romulus founded the city of Rome and built his house. The hill then became the “place to live” for Roman nobility. After that, Emperor Domitian, brother and successor of Emperor Titus, bought all the land there, tore down all the houses, and built his palace and gardens. We got to see the ruins of his private stadium, the second story of his private rooms, his banquet hall, and his throne room. Apparently he was so paranoid about assassins that he had the marble in the public areas of his palace polished to a reflective shine so he could see someone coming up behind him (ironically, it was his wife who killed him later). The tour guide also taught us a bit about the different types of marble used in ancient Rome (one of which, the porphyry, the emperor’s marble, existed only in one vein in the Egyptian desert and was exhausted by the Roman emperors and now no longer exists outside of Roman relics. This marble is so hard that it would take 1 hour today to cut 3 centimeters into it with a diamond cutter), and how it was attached to the walls (which is why so many Roman ruins, including the coloseum, have giant holes in the walls all over—they used to be covered in marble held to the walls by nails and concrete).

From the top of the hill we were also able to see the ruins of several temples, including Romulus (not the founder of Rome but the other), the vestal virgins (who had more rights than any other women in Rome; they were allowed to own land, make wills, ride in chariots, pardon condemned men they met on the street, and other unheard of privileges), and Julius Caesar (people still bring flowers to his temple). We were also able to see the Via Sacra, ancient Rome’s main street (I walked it!), marked by the Arch of Titus (built to commemorate the sacking of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.) and the Arch of Septimus Severus. This is the path of the Roman Triumph, where the army’s victory parades took place (they began in the coloseum, went under the arch of Titus to the Arch of Septimus Severus and from there to the former Roman bank/mint, where the spoils of war were then deposited.

After our tours, we went looking for a place to eat dinner. It was sevenish, the sun was already going down, and apparently Rome closes down early because 2/3s of the shops and diners we’d passed in the afternoon were now closed. We did find a nice outdoor restaurant and ordered rice with some kind of cream sauce and scampi (thinking, rice = healthy and scampi = protein). While we waited, some guy came by with an accordion and totally serenaded the customers eating there. I had this “Lady and the Tramp” flashback, it was such an Italian stereotype. The food, unfortunately, was not nearly so great this time around. For one thing, there was this giant clawed thing in my rice, with antennae and broken legs scattered throughout (gross!). The fact that there was very little shrimp meat in that monster meant that there was nothing to make up for the gross factor either. The rice itself was kind of weird too, so to make up for it, we ordered gilato. We wanted chocolate, but our waiter, who spoke at least 3 languages (English, Italian and Japanese) and had refused to let us order fruit salad earlier in the meal, brought us these giant dishes of 3 types of gilato, including chocolate. The strawberry flavor was so not my favorite, but the lemon was good, and the chocolate was fabulous.


Overall, we really love Rome. Tomorrow we plan to go see the Vatican and St. Peter’s Basilica, just as soon as we’ve run a few errands (read: figured out how to get to Venice, and then how to get to London, without paying through the nose. Train tickets are suddenly impossible to find!) We’re excited about that tour, especially the Sistine Chapel, but we’re also looking forward to our trip to Venice. I’ll be sad to leave Rome, but Venice will be wonderful too (the plan there is to sit, relax, take time off, drink some coffee, maybe take a gondola ride, and enjoy our final day of non-law school freedom, so I can’t say I’m disappointed about it).

French Lessons: Truths and Misconceptions

Paris and I have a love/hate relationship. I absolutely love the language. It was amazing to walk around and listen to people speak French all day long. It’s such a beautiful, liquid language. The downside, of course, is that I hardly understand more than two or three phrases, and people kept speaking it at me. I learned an interesting lesson here though. I have been told on previous occasions that the French hate Americans. This may well be true, I have no proof one way or the other. But it is true that they don’t particularly like to speak English unless you try to speak French first. What I have discovered, however, is that a simple “Bonjour” followed by “Parles vous Engles?” is generally enough. It earns you a smile and a helpful demeanor, whereas assuming they speak English, or even asking if they do in English, will earn you a scowl, or at least an attitude of “I will only go so far to help you out.” I would like to point out to you, hotel personnel, that we all know you speak English, and furthermore, it’s sort of your job, but whatever, Mr. Grumpypants receptionist. Anyway, thanks Mom, for the minor French lessons. I never thought that one phrase would be enough, but it was essential to our survival the last 24 hours.

Like its language, Paris is beautiful! I have never seen such gorgeous architecture anywhere. Everything was unique and pretty, even in the not-so-nice part of town. We should know, because, while the nice british train station lady kindly booked us a hotel room just a ten minute walk from the train station, she didn’t warn us that the hotel was in a shady part of town. It was admittedly nerve wracking to walk, in the dark, after midnight, through a mostly-silent-except-for-the-bars Paris, talking softly so as not to advertise the foreigner thing, while trying to follow a very general map in the dark to our somewhat grungy hotel. We did find it, and in doing so, figured out the Parisian street signs are mostly posted on the corners of buildings, rather than streets. Go figure.

Anyway, hotel, check. No wi-fi in the hotel though, and no lift, so it was an adventure getting Yvette’s luggage up 2 flights of stairs to our room. (Getting it down the next morning was almost more of a challenge; she ended up sort of sliding it down on it’s front.)

There was also no real shower in our hotel room. Instead there was one of those bathtub with the showerhead attached to a hose type deals. The idea is to sit in the tub, and use the showerhead, but neither of us was really comfortable sitting in that thing all considering, so what to do? Yvette showered first, and I’m not sure what went on, but the bathroom was pretty much drenched by the time it was my turn, which was hysterical. With that in mind, I decided kneeling in the tub was the proper solution, so there was this whole squatting and balancing aspect thrown in that was extra challenging, and I felt very accomplished when I finally figured out the best way to make it work and only got the bathroom a little wet. (By the way, Europe, what’s up with the strange pastel green bathrooms? Floor, walls, sink, tub…I’m surprised the towels aren’t green!)

After leaving our hotel (which looked much friendlier in the daylight, and the day receptionist was much nicer too), we spent the day applying our knowledge of London’s underground to Paris’s, and (after a to die for it was so delicious breakfast of chocolate croissants) took a trip to the Louvre for the afternoon. We waited in a gigantic line for about 45 minutes to get in, but it was worth it. That museum is huge, and we only had a couple of hours, so obviously we couldn’t see everything. We parked ourselves in the Greek and Roman sculpture section and got to see Michelangelo’s Dying Slave, Venus de Milo, and Eros and Psyche. There were also a couple of statutes of Athena and Ares that I recognized from art books and was excited to see. We took a side trip to peek at the Mona Lisa, because she was right there, but as we could see her just fine from the side of the room (smaller than you’d think and behind two or three layers of glass at the end of a long line) we waved and moved on—let the tourists with more time spend an hour waiting for a close up.

Then it was back to the hotel to pick up our luggage, and a couple of train hops to the station where we were to catch our ride to Italy. The more you ride the underground, I’ve discovered, the easier it gets. Paris was even easier to understand than London’s (maybe because we had a good map) although it has many sublevels, which can make navigation a little difficult. And of course, all the signs are in French. Really though, the language barrier wasn’t as awful as I was expecting. I was really nervous about spending a day in France, but it really wasn’t too bad. And the lady who helped us book our train to Italy was amazing (we seem to be getting lucky with the train people). She spoke English beautifully, and gave us a few French lessons while she was looking up ticket and hotel prices (and laughed a little at the ensuing mispronunciation). She also gave us directions to the train station from which our overnight train would be leaving, and went and got a map out of her purse for us to use when we had no idea which stations she was talking about. The lady who directed us to the Louvre was not so helpful, but she didn’t speak much English, so that was part of it.

The one bad part of our Paris underground experience involved a very old, very small lift, Yvette’s giant suitcase, and the door’s refusal to open. There was a panicky moment in which the help button got us an automated response (in French) followed by many French people walking by the lift’s glass doors, which we were banging on, and refusing to even really look at us. Then a nice old lady, who didn’t speak a lick of English but who seemed somewhat amused by our plight in addition to being sympathetic, stood outside the door and used made up sign language to try to help us figure out how to fix the lift. When that didn’t work, she and her cane toddled over to the information desk and reported our problem, and within 5 minutes, a train station official came over with a walkie talkie to help us. The old lady left at that point (Yvette and I calling out “Merci!” through the tiny gap in the door), and the official, also amused by our situation, assured us we’d be out in a moment. And we were. Of course, we still had the problem of Yvette’s luggage, but we weren’t risking the lift again, so we just carried it up the stairs.

And now, here we are, even more tired than yesterday, but happy with our day (although I now want to chop my shoulders off, they hurt so much) and although I enjoyed Paris, I am happy to be leaving and excited about Italy tomorrow. We still have to figure out how this whole sleeper train thing works (how do we make these seats into beds?! The pictures aren’t very helpful!). Also, the train guy took all our tickets and passports and hasn’t given them back yet, which is somewhat nerve-wracking. But I got to eat super yummy French bread in France, and tomorrow I get to see the coloseum, so who cares? ^_^

P.S. I totally came down with a cold yesterday and cannot stop sneezing! Holly, I’m blaming you!

King’s Cross Station is not what I expected…and neither is anything else.

So far this trip has been…intense.

Yvette and I left San Francisco at 11:45 p.m. Sunday evening. I slept off and on during the three hour flight to Chicago, where we arrived at 5:45 a.m. Chicago time. We had a three hour layover in which we had a baggage snafu and ended up having to go through security again ( O’Hare uses the new x-ray machines, so I have that creepy experience under my belt now *shudder*) and we were on our way to London.

Customs was surprisingly painless. A five minute conversation with the customs agent, and I had my first stamp in my passport. We snagged a shuttle to the hotel (it was 11:30 London time at this point, and I had been up for a total of 30 hours), checked-in, and were in bed by one.

The plan was to fall into bed and sleep for 7 hours. But then neither of us slept very well. We ended up getting up at four in the morning and rearranging our bags, something we’d planned to do in the morning, while brainstorming plans for Tuesday. Then we went back to sleep, and got up with just enough time to check out at noon. We spent the rest of the day figuring out the public transit system.

FYI, the buses in London don’t stop unless you flag them down; hovering at the bus stop is not enough. I don’t know how many buses we missed figuring that out, and then forgetting we were supposed to do it. Also, the bus drivers are crazy! I have never before seen buses driven the way I saw buses driven today. However, we found the bus drivers to be some of the nicest, most patient and kindly helpful people we encountered today. Not once did we encounter an impatient or dismissive attitude, which was not the case at the airport and several of the train stations. And considering the number of “we’re trying to do such and such, how should we…” questions we asked today, we’ve definitely taken a wide enough sample of the London population to know.

I think the quiet is getting to me though. Londoners get on a bus and sit silently. They get on a train and sit silently. Train stations are loud—because large groups of people walk and their steps echo. It’s…weird. I am proud of myself, because I only started to get a little loud twice today. Go me!

Now, London observations:

Expensive! (Although I did find this little corner market, where I got 5 apples for 1 pound. I was pretty impressed with that)
Very fast paced. People rush, rush, rush everywhere.

The hotel guy will laugh at you when you have 6 bags that need to be retrieved from the hotel’s storage in the back. He will, however, try to hide it in a politely English way, and will refuse your help when you offer it. He will then carry out your two duffle bags in one hand, which will both irritate you and make you want to hire him to carry your luggage for always, because *you* certainly can’t do that, and your arms are still sore from carrying them to the hotel from the airport last night. You will also feel the need to explain to the incredulously amused hotel personnel that no, you are not silly over-packing Americans, but rather, Americans studying abroad for four months who packed accordingly but are in “where do we live for the next two weeks” limbo. You will refrain, however, because the hotel people really do not care, and are determined to be amused (which is better than irritated).

Starbucks is, comfortingly, the same worldwide, right down to the upbeat music (it was reggae today). And a chocolate frappucino is identical, whether you order it at the Starbucks in the CA grocery store, or the London train station. Also, there were people there who didn’t have accents (meaning Americans! The first we’ve met since arrival) and that was nice to hear too. The sandwiches, however, are not the same, no matter how the description makes them sound so. It wasn’t’ exactly gross, because there wasn’t much taste to it, but wasn’t really an enjoyable experience either.

Hello McDonald’s. I see you through the window, and I recognize your familiar golden arches, but why do you look so hoity-toity and upper crust today? I shall have to investigate your interior at a future date and discover whether you are equally blue-blooded on the inside here in London. (Note: the apparently universal reaction of children to the sight of that yellow M: “Mum! McDonald’s! It’s McDonald’s! Can we go?” Admittedly, it’s even more adorable in an English accent)

I was right. London makes me miss Portland. I started out the day in a tee shirt, with my wet hair pulled back. But it was overcast and breezy, with a light (occasional) spatter of rain. Within 15 minutes, my hair was down (still wet, but now warm) under a wool hat (thanks Mom!) and my sweatshirt was on. (I heart you Portland!)

King’s Cross Station is…not what I expected. I mean, Harry Potter paints a certain picture and the reality is nothing like it. For one thing, it’s huge. I mean huge!!! It stretches on forever. And I have never seen so many people in one place outside of a stadium. It’s like a river: streams of people moving through underground tunnels, little streams branching off and new streams merging, and at the end, when you reach the station proper, the river flows out into the ocean of people coming, going, buying tickets, eating, and waiting for trains.

If you want to go to Italy from London, King’s Cross is apparently not where you go (so no trying to figure out where platform 9 ¾ is today. Maybe next time…). You want St. Pancras International, next door. Although King’s Cross is where you store you r extra luggage when you are going away on a train and don’t want to take it with you. A very nice man will even come around the counter and lift it onto the conveyor belt for you when you’re so tired (and hungry because you haven’t eaten all day) that he can apparently tell you weren’t sure how you were going to manage it. He will then ask you about explosives and whether you have any in there, and send you on your way.

And getting from the underground to King’s Cross isn’t particularly easy. At the airport, you go down the stairs, through the gate, and down another flight of stairs to the appropriate stop. At King’s Cross, there are all these different levels and walkways you have to take to get from the underground stop to the actual station, and lifts every which way. We had to go up three or four levels, and find the right tunnels in between the right lifts…Good thing I can read a map!

But eventually we found the right station, and got tickets to…Paris! One must go to Paris before one can go to Italy. Unfortunately, it was too late to take a sleeper train from Paris to Italy tonight, so we will be staying overnight in Paris, making a short trip to Notre Dame and the Louvre tomorrow, and then hopping on a train overnight to Italy! Two days in Rome, 1 in Venice (Pompeii’s been put on the backburner due to its southernmost location, and time constraints). And the lady at the train station was amazing too. We were concerned about finding a place to stay because we will be getting into Paris at 11:45 pm, and you can’t make reservations at the train station, but she bent the rules for us and got us a decently priced hotel room 10 minutes (by foot) from the train station and equally close to both out tourist destinations tomorrow. She even told us which train to arrange from Paris to Italy. With those stressors eliminated, maybe we’ll even get a chance to eat more than half a sandwich each tomorrow too! ^_^

So current status:

I am a bit hungry. I can’t go 5 minutes without yawning. I am admittedly stressed and my shoulders are screaming after spending my day lugging ten hundred pounds of luggage all over London. (The ten hundred pounds is an exaggeration, the all over London isn’t.) I really miss my family.

But I am this close (holding fingers an inch apart) to being in Italy. That is amazing! And Paris, for all I don’t know the language, should be a lot of fun too. Plus, my travel buddy is totally fun, really good at planning things out, and keeps offering me chocolate. So far, this trip is looking pretty good!