Day of Dilemmas

I'm not sure what is worse, a thirty minute delayed flight causing you to arrive in a foreign country where you don't know the language and only have 40 minutes to find a bus to take you to a train station or being delayed two hours at a train station to travel 30 minutes to your final destination. Either way both were bad and both happened to me on July 15th.

So lets start from the beginning, Friday was the findal day of school. Our professor Iara decided to take us on a field trip for our last class session. She said we would only be walking a little however a little to her meant a 25 minute walk for me. Once we finally made it to the San Ginnes Chocolate Factory, I was relieved. Although, I wasn't too excited about the churros and chocolate. One, I don't like chocolate and second I'm not very fond of churros. But, Iara insisted I tried one. The first bite wasn't very tasty, but an onlooker told me to put powdered sugar on it. So I did. Then I realized their "churros" are our funnel cakes. It was delicious. I ended up eating like 5 little churros with lots of powdered sugar. The only thing missing was the strawberry topppping. I also tried the chocolate, it was like dipping chocolate. It's just not my cup of tea. After the churros we went back to school to have our final session with Fernando. He gave us a personal questionnaire to fill out and then discuss. It was like a "get to know you" piece. It was alright. Finally our school was over and we took th emetro to the airport.

The visa check in marked the beginning of our troubles. I checked in first, then Cristina went to check in, but there was a problem. She had accidently printed Monica's boarding pass.

*Pause for explanation*
Ryanair is the "low fares" company. However, they get you by charging for everything. I'm honestly surprised they don't charge to use the restroom.

*Back to the story*
So if you don't print your own boarding pass, they charge 40 euros to print it for you. What a joke, "low fares"? Your 20 euro flight just tripled. They aren't so "low fare" anymore. Well Cristina had accidently printed Monicas, so they wanted her to pay the 40 euros. We weren't going down without a fight. We ran around the airport looking for someone, an information desk, the bank, anyone to print her boarding pass from her usb. She even went to the computer/ printer station. But wouldn't you know it the printer was broken. I wonder if Ryanair had something to do with that. After trying relentlessly for an hour, we gave in and split the 40 euros four ways, so Cristina could get a boarding pass.

*End of 1st dilemma, start mini-dilemma #2*
Monica and I decided to go through security while Anna and Cristina went to get the boarding pass. When I got to the other side of security, I noticed that the screen said our flight was boarding. I started to panic. I waited for Monica to get through security then we ran to our gate. By this time our flight now said last call on the screen. Wehen we arrived to the gate no one was there and the monitor just kept flasing last call. I was completely stressed out, the the monitor just went blank. The people standing around us, said it had to be a mistake. Uggh, Ryanair just knows how to upset me. About an hour later, our plane arrived and we departed 30 minutes late. Boo!

*So comes dilemma #3*
We arrived in Italy late and we had to run to find the bus/ shuttle to take us to the train station. It was quite confusing. We didn't know where to go and we didn't speak the language. Then we found two buses, hopped on one and hoped it was the right one. At this point, we had about 40 minutes til our train departed.

*Enter dilemma #4*
The bus ride was a slow one with many stops through town. We arrived to a super busy train station ten minutes prior to our departure. We were frantic and the screen didn't show our destination. No one seemed to be able to help us, then someone told us it was gate 10. We were running through the train station. When we got there, Ana noticed our train #, was set to depart from gate 8. So we ran over there and hopped on the train. Yeah, we made it!! Great, so we think.

*Now, dilemma #5*
I'll start with the positive, the lady next to me spoke English and informed me that we were on the right train to Florence. (happy dance, because we made it, miraculously) The train was headed to Rome but stopped in Florence, the screen just doesn't show the stops. Now the bad part, for some reason, the train just sat there for 2 hours. It was delayed 2 hours, I'm not sure why. I still haven't figured it out. The gossip I sort of heard and could understand was that protestors were standing on the tracks. Either way, we finally arrived in Florence at about 1015pm. The one good thng about the day was that our hotel was three blocks from the train station, so we walked and saved $ on a taxi. We dropped off our luggage and went to have a late dinner next to our hotel. It was a little nice, modern cafe. We really liked it. The pizza was delicious, like ours just more flavorful. Everything was going wonderfully until we got the check.

*Dilemma #6*
In Italy, some places charge a "cover charge" to eat at their establishment. It was 10 euros for the 4 of us. Ugghh, Spain charges you for bread and butter that they place in front of you without asking you if you want it. Now, Italy was charging us a cover charge just to be there. I think they just try to get oer on us tourists. I mean what are we suppose to do, say no, refuse to pay it. We can't, we are in a foreign country. We just paid our tab and left. It did teach us to always ask if they charged a cover charge prior to eating at any restaurants.

Well that was my trip to Italy, the weekend got ten times better. I will tell you about it in my next blogs.