No journey always goes according to plan, no matter how many times you run through the itinerary in your head. For example, today. According to our plane tickets, a group of us were supposed to board a plane from Tampa to go to Miami, and then leave Miami to go to London, and then from London go to Milan. HOWEVER, here's where things go wrong. We get called saying our plane was undergoing maintenance and that we had to switch flights. Elaina and I were rerouted to go to Atlanta and then London, while the guys were going to Minneapolis. We were able to all get on the same flight, but this now means that we are at the Tampa Airport for an extra 4 hours.....The lady gave us $12 meal vouchers, which was awesome since I hadn't eaten yet.
The story only gets better. Getting to Minneapolis was alright, not much of a problem there. The flight from Minneapolis to London was killer. Red-eye flight, of course I couldn't sleep very well on the plane, but that's not the worst. We get to London where we basically step into a mall right after customs. Luckily we were able to catch Bobby and Arlenne. So now we chill at Heathrow for hoooooourrrsssss...... Our flight to Milan was delayed (there seems to be a pattern with these flights....) and they don't tell us the gate until 30-40 minutes before departure. Everything seems to run on a different schedule here. There was also another delay to actually board the plane. Perfect. Landing in Milan and thereafter might possibly be the most stressful experience I have ever gone through. None of us speak Italian, which is our fault, but, we manage to squeak by with some Spanish. But we didn't have clear directions from the airport to our hostel, but the transportation guy tells us to take the train and then the bus. Train, no problem. Sort of. A few bumps, but nothing major. After the train is where it gets good. We get directions from a cop as to where to find the bus we need to get on, through a series of broken english, spanish, and hand motions. We actually never found the bus. We walk circles around a few blocks past the station in an attempt to find the stop, but were quite unsuccessful. It also did not help that it was nearing around midnight. Eventually we make our way back to the station and split into taxis that take us to the hostel. Story keeps getting better from here. The driver stops at what is supposedly our hostel, except that it says Hotel Marlenne on the outside. So all of us are like, "No, this isn't it." But he argued back that it was. And he was right. The hostel was like in a group of hostels and hotels together. Now we drudge all our luggage up to the hostel and get things sorted out. Now I'm in bed and stressed and things couldn't have gone any worse. What a great start to the journey, but hey, I've learned that good things do come out of bad situations. Perhaps tomorrow will prove to be a better day.
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