Irritating Italy

Italy has been rather disappointing. Maybe it's because it's too hyped up, maybe it's just Oct. 30, maybe both.

Many of you will be wondering what happened on October 30. I'll try to tell you, but it's just one of those things, you had to be there.

My friend Erin and I were staying at a B&B in San Giovanni Lupatoto, about half an hour bus ride outside of Verona, Italy. We had a train to Venice at 9:30, so we left for the bus stop at 8. We proceeded to wait there for over two hours for the buses that failed to come, even though the locals told us the bus ran on Sunday mornings. Needless to say we missed our train.

As we were walking back to the B&B to have them call a taxi for us, a taxi pulls up next to us and drops someone off. In Verona, taxis aren't driving everywhere for you to hail; there are stations where you can get a taxi or you can call one to pick you up. God sent us this taxi and we thought "everything is going to be good now, we'll just get a ticket for the next train to Venice and have an hour or so before our train to Rome."

That's not how it worked.

We did get tickets for the next train to Venice, only to find out it was delayed an hour and a half. If it were that simple we still would have made our connection in Venice. However, somehow things got even more delayed and we would have missed the train to Rome even if we did make it to Venice. We don't know what was going down on the tracks from Verona to Venice that day, but apparently God did not want us there.

We decided to buy tickets from Verona to Rome - just skip Venice entirely -we already had hostel reservations in Rome. Again, if only things were the simple.

We had run out of cash buying the second tickets to Venice, so we tried to use our cards to get the tickets to Rome. No go for either of us. Since cards work differently in Europe we weren't overly anxious yet - we just had no cash or phones in the middle of Italy.

At an ATM, Erin's card was denied. Again. (Her card being blocked is the story of England Term. Wells Fargo keeps ignoring its notes that she will be using her card abroad. It's only been three times that she's had to remind them. No big deal.)

Thank goodness my card worked! We had cash! And thus over-priced tickets! Wait a second, we have more waiting to do? We've only been waiting around since 8 this morning and now it's noon. The train is at 1:26. Food would probably be a good idea... But wait, there's only McDonalds at the Verona train station. That's exactly what you think of eating when in Italy.

Eventually we made it to Rome. Half an hour before we orginally would have gotten there too. We found our hostel easily enough - five flights up -only to find a sign directing us to a building across the street.

Oh Italy! You are over-rated and beautiful all at the same time.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Via Volturno,Rome,Italy