Gotta go... Europe!!

Day 5 - April 11

The train destination for the day was Genova, Italy, but on the way, we stopped at Monaco. In a span of 45 mins (to catch the next train out), Ev and I split up. I ran all the way to the top of the hill where the Monaco Palace was, took a million pics, found the post office to mail postcards and buy Monaco stamps, and ran back down. In the process I learnt that Grace Kelly married Prince Rainier III and became royalty. Something about it stirred up a lot of talk in Hollywood when she did that, but didn't understand why. There's something about Kings and Queen and royalty that I get a kick out of.

Because Monaco is a different country from France, we technically could get our passport stamped. Of course with the whole European Union thing, we don't get stampped anywhere. The tourist information centre offered Monaco stampping as free souvenirs for tourist, so of course I made sure we got it haha! And the funny thing is that they pronounce the country "Mon-AH-co" like with a fobby accent similar to how my parents pronounce "Club Monaco". Made me laugh =)

Got back on the train -- and it was a crazy train with NO lights! We're in the station trying to find our seats in the train, and experienced our very first Harry Potter-like train with the little cabins and doors. Of course, it was kinda hard looking for our seats in the dark, and we finally stumbled into the right cabin. There were already two people there, a guy from Toronto, and a girl from Ireland. They were both students in Scotland travelling for spring break (they get a month off, supposedly to study, but everyone just travels instead).

In this train it kinda smelt funny, an odd combination of pee and tuna. We eventually figured out where the tuna smell was coming from as a can rolled out from under one of the seats! The seats are three side by side facing another three side by side in each cabin, so Ev saw it rolling towards my bag, which I luckily picked up before the tuna water reached my stuff. Mark, the Canadian on the train, volunteered to get towels from the bathroom and wipe it all up. It's nice to have guys around, I have no idea what we would have done if it was just us girls, it was pretty gross!

Funny thing about being in a train without lights is that for the most part it's fine cause it's bright outside and there are lots of big windows, but as soon as you get into a tunnel (and there are lots since we were travelling from France to Italy) it's PITCH black. It was so black that one time we were commenting on how we can't even see our hands in front of our faces, and then we left the tunnel, and we could see that all four of us were staring at our hands, it was SO funny!

Got to Genova, and wandered around trying to figure out where to go. First Italian city, so we hadn't gotten used to the language yet. Luckily a really nice Italian lady saw us wandering down the street (we were actually going in the right direction), and in English asked us if we needed help. So nice of her!

Our B&B was really nice, the lady who ran it took the time to show us a map of the city, pointed out good places to eat, where people hang out, where we should stay away from at night, etc. And since the place we were staying at was her home, there was a kitchen to use, and free internet on her computer! Of course it was another non-QWERTY keyboard, but this time it was just the Y and Z switched (I typed a lot of "zou" that night) and messed up punctuation. Was a lot easier to type, except when I had to type my name -- Janez, sigh!

Wandered around the neighborhood for a bit and then for dinner we went to this great little place run by three italian grampas who were brothers. There were so nice to us, and kept giving us food to try since everything was local food. Was so yummy. Then back to home to sleep, but it was FREEZING, so we used two comforters instead of one haha!

~ JCL 23:12 - Roma, Italy

posted by JCL @ 4:53 p.m.