Italy

It's been a long time since I updated my  blog. Both out of laziness and out of the lack of free time. I apologize to my friends and family who have been wondering what I've been doing. After I get back to Nebraska I'll do a "post-Cannes analysis" of my time and experience. Mainly because I still need time to sort out my thoughts and feelings on it and traveling doesn't give me enough alone/thinking time to do that. So for the time being, I'll be blogging about traveling.

Getting to Rome was an ordeal. Leaving from Cannes to Italy was easy. The first two trains (Cannes to Ventimiliga and Ventimilgia to Genova) were really enjoyable. The country side and the first views of Italy were a welcome change from the city and decadence of Cannes. But once we got into Genova, the last train to Termini had just left. So Aliza, Thomas, and I went over our options at the ticket station. Either we could find a hostel in Genova and leave for Rome in the morning, or we could take a night train at 12 and get into Rome at 5:50 in the morning. Considering we knew that there was a place waiting for us in Rome and we had no idea where we would go in Genova, we decided to wait 4 hours until midnight and take the night train. Whether or not we made the right decision is still unclear.

In Genova we found a nice, small place to grab something to eat and used their wifi to let everyone know what happened then we got a couple of drinks afterwards. All in all, Genova wasn't a terrible city, at least the places we stopped by. But the station past 9 was one of the sketchiest places I'd ever been. The people in the station looked homeless, crazy, tweaked out, tired, angry, or some combination of each. I never let go of my Swiss Army knife. We decided to get away from the station and sit on the platform where at least we were mostly alone with a smattering of other ticket holders and rail workers. It might have been the longest three hours of my life. Then it became the longest 5 hours when the train pulled up.

I won't go into a lot of details yet, but that night train may have been one of the worst places I've tried tolerate. It was hot and cramped and every face in the sleeper cars looked at you as if you were an enemy. They questioned who you were and where you were going. They looked at you like you were broken. But most of all, I think they looked at you like they needed out of this place. We probably all looked at each other the same way and didn't even realize it.

Long story short, we made it to Rome at 5:50 in the morning, neither having slept more than 25 minutes total. 

From the station we got a cab to the hostel and crashed once we hit the pillow. After a short sleep of 3 hours (however Thomas had to wait for his hostel  to get his room ready so he didn't sleep at all) we got a well needed breakfast and met Devon.

She took us on a short walking tour of Rome, but we were basically all zombies so I don't know how much it really sunk in. Unfortunately we didn't have much time to do anything after missing our train and we were so exhausted that we just wanted to go back to the hostel and get sleep, so it was a brief tour. But sleep the night was so nice, no matter how uncomfortable the beds were. 

Devon and I left the next afternoon for Florence, Thomas and Aliza decided to stay one more day in Rome to see what they missed. But I'm glad I went with Devon. Florence is such a great city; the pace, the views, the structures, history, art, it's all so much better. Plus the apartment was great.

There's too much to write and the train is pulling into the station. I'll try to stay as updated as possible.