At Last I Begin

I have to start tellig about my trip, or I'll keep putting it off. I'm going to do it through multiple posts, because there is a lot to tell, and I'll not enjoy doing it all in one post.

So our trip began. We drove over to the SLC airport Wednesday (April 22). We ended up flying through security, so we had pleanty of waiting time before our flight left. I was the only one who had breakfast, but in true Audrey fashion, I was hungry again, so we all went and got some expensive airport food to hold us over. Finally we left, and we began our 4 hour flight to NY.

When we go to NY we decided to eat at Chili's Too and a couple interesting things happened... first, a pigeon got in the airport somehow, and it flew right past us, and second... New Yorkers (at least the ones we saw) are all that they are roumored to be. Our waitress was in too much of a hurry to pay us much attention, not personable at all (it seemed none of the waitresses were), she talked FAST and was annoyed when we didn't catch all she listed off to us, and stuff like that.

Then off we went to our next flight, 9 hours to Venice.

I didn't sleep more than...20 minutes in all, and I even took a sleep aid. I wanted to sleep, because when we got to Venice, it would be morning, and we had lots to do still. Alas, no sleep, so I watched movies.

So then we were in Venice... tired, and excited. We took a shuttle to the Marriot we would be staying at the next night, then we took a bus to the train station in the heart of Venice. We bought our tickets to Rome, found our train, and hopped on for a 4 hour ride.

By this point, you must understand, we were delirious with exhaustion! We had the "tired sillies" and there were many bouts of uncontrolable laughter and even laughing till tears came, like Kirsten in this photo.

We attempted a game of Phase 10, but we were unable to finish, because pleople fell asleep... sadly, I wasn't one of them.

So the train stops and people get off, and pleople get on, just as we'd seen many times over the last 2 hours, only this time... the train began to head back in the same direction we had come!

CRAP! We all freaked out! We were heading back to Venice! How did we miss the sign that we were in Rome? Wasn't this supposed to be a 4 hour ride? What do we do? We don't want to have to buy more tickets to Rome!!

Enter 2 Mormon missionaries from Utah! Rome blessing #1! We asked them if we were going the right way, and to our excitment, and their dismay, the answer was yes, we were on the right train, but they (the missionaries) were not. Perhaps they were there just to help us? hmmm.... ANYWAY, so soon the train headed off another direction and we could see we were not heading back.

The ride was cool though, we got to see the farm lands and fields, the old buildings and the lovely green countryside. I really loved that we got too see that, it was nothing like Rome and Venice.

Then, there we were, in Rome. TA DA! :-D I never really thought I'd see Rome, but I was there, and I was excited.... so I'll tell you about Rome next time.