Oh my gosh, what a journey it was to get home!
We were up, packed and ready to check out by the allotted 10:30am after I picked up breakfast from the grocery store for the last time (bananas, fresh orange juice, danishes...).
We put our luggage in the luggage room because we had three hours to kill before heading over to the shuttle. We attempted to go for a little walk but after printing off our boarding passes at a phone/internet centre we just wanted to go sit and wait until it was time to leave.
We sat out in the garden area of the hostel and chatted with a few other people coming and going. During one of these chats we learned that Rome had undergone daylight savings time that night and we had no idea! That meant that we were up and checked out an hour earlier than we had to be! Which meant we had four hours to kill, not three! URGH! lol It would have been helpful to know that information before we got out of bed...
Anyway, Jeff and I entertained ourselves by chatting with a few other Canadians who had just arrived and by playing Akinator Web Genius on the ipad... love that game! :)
We headed off to the train station at the correct time and stood in line to get our boarding passes for the bus. The whole shuttle thing was chaotic as people didn't have boarding passes or validated their ticket wrong or tried to pay cash to get on the bus. It was a little nuts but we figured it out and got a seat. Now, it couldn't just be any seat because Jeff didn't want the first two rows but the third row and the only two seats on the bus that were broken! Well, the seats ahead of us were broken and the only thing keeping the heavy set guy in front of Jeff from leaning too far back and squishing him was a red rod stuck between the backs of the seats to hold them together... lol I couldn't stop laughing at Jeff for choosing those seats out of them all!
The ride only took half an hour and I'm not surprised why as the driver weaved in and out of traffic, pissing people off along the way (at one point, a passing car was giving him the finger, while laying on his horn, while a smoke dangled out of his mouth and his daughter witnessed). I felt nauseous with the whole jerky movement of the bus but managed to hold my breakfast down (barely).
We checked our bags, found our gate, shopped at the duty free and then tried to spend every last euro we had - it was surprisingly hard! I ended up getting some biscottis and some beer nuts from a shop in the airport... lol
Because we pre-booked our seats we knew we'd be sitting in a two-some together which was excellent. Airtransat isn't known for having a lot of room but we had no problem with it at all. We received a hot meal, beef stirfry with rice (something we hadn't had in a long time) and then proceeded to watch four movies, FOUR! It was a super long flight, over nine hours and neither of us slept much at all (I think I got about 20 minutes maybe... Jeff said I didn't sleep long enough because he wanted my late night pizza snack when it came around, lol).
The plane ride was pretty uneventful, which is good for flyers. The flight director was really thorough and kept us update with all the happenings on the flight and it was all executed smoothly. For over nine hours, it was a good flight.
We found our airtransit shuttle after going through customs, which gave us a little bit of a hard time (so irritating! "How can you afford this trip if you're not working?" Oh, I don't know, we saved our money, how else do people do it!? Urgh), and found we were the only two getting driven home. The driver was super chatty and talked our ear off the whole way, which actually helped the ride go quite quickly.
We definitely had mixed emotions when we arrived home; It was nice to be in a familiar, clean, homey place, but it was sad not to be heading off on another adventure. Both of us felt the sting of the end of our trip and weren't exactly happy about it.
We showered, watched a few episodes of Big Bang Theory on DVD and then hit the hay. It was nearly 1am (7am Rome time without the daylight savings!) by the time we got to sleep. Talk about a day of timing confusion!
We slept until 7am or so this morning and then both lay awake until we decided to get up. It's now 8:50am or nearly 3pm in Rome time. Our bodies are all out of whack and yet we're both awake (Jeff's looking at the savings we got on our duty free purchases and watching sportsnet as he unpacks his stuff).
I'm going to find something to eat for breakfast... Oh, funny story - when we arrived home last night I found a sample pack of nutella in our pile of mail! I had so much nutella on our trip because it was everywhere, so this was hilarious to come home to!
Anyway - yesterday was a long, long day, and we'll probably be beat later this afternoon, but for now we're adjusting to being home and are looking forward to sharing our experiences with our families and friends.
Thanks again for following our journey and for encouraging me to post :)
All the best,
Amanda (and Jeff) :)
