Saturday, April 18, 2009

The break in spring

Day Six:
Taylor, Julia, and I checked out of our hostel in Bern, Switzerland at around ten and went to the train station to catch our train to Zurich, Switzerland. The train was a few hours so I got caught up on some sleep. When we got there, it was snowing a bit so we walked around to try and find some sort of shelter. We ended up in a bookstore, reading about Zurich. Apparently, it has 60 movie theaters, or something. The weather eventually cleared up and we went and walked around some. We didn't have a hostel in Zurich because we were going to take a night train to Pisa, Italy that night, so we carried our packs around with us all day (they were about 22 lbs.), which wasn't too bad, but it did get tiring. The three of us decided to not spend a lot of money on food for the next few days, so we bought a kilo (2.2 lbs) of bread and ate it with jam for lunch and dinner. We didn't really do anything in Zurich except walk around and see stuff. It was a neat city, even though there wasn't a ton to do. We had about 45 minutes to spare before we needed to be at the train station, even though we were so close, so we just stayed relatively near to it. For some reason, I had a mini break down and started crying. I was really missing Sennit that day; I miss him every day, but I don't cry every day. Julia and Taylor just sort of stood there hugging me for a bit, attempting to make me laugh. They succeeded. Even though I was still a little sad, I felt better. We got on the train for Pisa and broke out the bread for dinner. But then we decided to have our own communion, which was cool. Taylor read from the Bible and broke the bread. Afterwards, we sang a song. We were the only ones in our compartment at the time. The other three people filed in at the next stop and then we all attempted to sleep on the train.

Day Seven:
Even though we were pretty tired from not getting a whole lot of sleep the night before, we were excited and ready to roll. We only had a few hours in Pisa before we had to catch our train to Milan, so we immediately started asking around as to where the Tower of Pisa was. We talked to a few different people, and they gave us the direction, but the way to get there was different from all of them. Finally, we just went back to the train station and found out we could take a bus directly to it. The tickets were only two Euro, so we went for it. There were a TON of people there, which was expected, but it was absolutely hilarious seeing all the other tourists pose like they were holding up the Tower or leaning against it. Of course, what did we do? The same thing. We also did some walking around and found this side street with super cute shops on it. Taylor, being a nice guy, let Julia and I go in almost all of them. I bought a necklace in one and a shirt for my brother, and Julia bought a cute skirt. Then we caught the bus back to the station to get on our train to Milan. The train took two hours longer than we were expecting, so we didn't get there until probably around 8pm-ish. We had a hostel booked in Milan, so we went to one of the Information desks to ask where it was. Unfortunately, we didn't have the address but the guy seemed to know where it was. He gave us a map and put a dot on it and sort of told us where to go. We went to McDonald's (because it was cheap, and open) for a quick dinner, and then went out and walked around, looking for our hostel. When we got to the place that was "dictated" on the map, it was a big industrial land fill. Yeah. WHAT THE HECK?! We thought that this COULDN'T be it, so we found a nearby hotel and he told us that it was in a different direction. Long story short, we ended up asking people in restaurants, people on the street, etc. We got a different direction every time. After walking around for three hours (it was 11pm now), we decided to give up on the hostel and go to the train station and sleep. Thankfully, there was a waiting room, but it had the most uncomfortable wooden benches ever (they were like church pews, but awful) and they opened the doors at night to get all the smoke out. Side note: it gets cold in Europe at night. Taylor stayed awake the whole night to keep an eye on us and our stuff so Julia and I could sleep. The two of us curled up on a bench, and made an attempt at getting some rest. I managed to squeeze in an hour (if that), but Julia slept for about three. I played cards with Taylor for a while to help keep him awake, and all "got up" at around 5am. We all agreed on getting the first train out of there so we could get to Rome and meet up with Steph, Tyler, and Luke at the hostel we had booked.

peace, love, and you don't know the half of it.
KaeRicc

2 comments:

Beth said...

You need to write a book about your adventures. I would gladly buy it! Miss you!

thewhisper said...

Haha, that would mean I'd actually have to turn on Writer's Mode and write well.