It was pretty cool.
We left Canada on March 8th. There were a bunch of people on my trip who'd never flown before, so it was an interesting experience for them, even though were were in a tiny Air Canada Jazz Dash-8 300. Some of our group had an earlier flight at 6am; I'm glad I wasn't one of them. The Timmins to Toronto flight is always a nice one, though, because there isn't this huge fight with tons of passengers, and the flight attendants always seem to be in a better mood.
Toronto airport was an adventure. I'd never been in the new terminal 1, so it was a bit of an exploration, especially since we had to get from one end of the terminal to the other. I think in that respect the airport design seemed a bit lacking, but maybe we just suck at navigating. Sitting around for hours there wasn't terribly entertaining, but I did play chess a few times and hang out with everybody
The flight to hamburg, however, was pretty bad. I would rate it as a 3 on a scale of 1-10. The airbus we flew in (a340, I think), was not all that awesome. No legroom at all. If only to fly business.
On the flight, though, I did discover the joy of XM kids radio. Seriously, I don't know how they can call any of this stuff "kids". Its more like crack-fiend radio! There was this one story about how the atlantic ocean was formed. I mean, it involved a sea-monster, scotland, a princess, and belly buttons. It was incredibly funny, but not in a good way. Its called "The Princess and the Sea Serpent" by Sharon Kennedy. If anybody can find a copy of the text, could they pop me a message off? Other cracked oout stuff included "Fireman" by Mr. Nicky and "Our Imaginary Rhino" by Justin Roberts. Check out the Channel Guide (PDF!) to see the other stuff.
When we finally arrived in Frankfurt, half the tour group headed straight for the bar. I suppose the novelty of being the legal drinking age was something, but it was still 8AM. Although, it was still night time in Canada, so you could make an arguement that way. The airport there was a maze though. A bunch of people weren't at the gate with 10 minutes to go before our flight took off, so I went searching for them with Mr. Bulger. I found them heading towards the gate, and they probably would have made it on time. I'm suprised nobody got really lost though.
After that Air Canada flight, Lufthansa was a dream. Comfortable seats, good food, and a quiet plane made for a great flight to Rome
Hitting the warm air in Rome was like an amazing wake-up call. It was like -20°C or something the day we left Cochrane, and getting into this wonderful warm air was great. We met our tour director, Rene, at the airport, and headed out in our tour bus to the hotel. I was expecting like a smaller bus somehow, not this huge tour bus. It was pretty sweet
The neighbourhood our hotel was in wasn't exactly what I would think of as Rome. No ruins around ;). It didn't seem like the friendliest area either, with graphitti, trash, and broken windows all over the place. The hotel was okay, but a bit dirty -- The bathtub had sand in it. I can't really complain -- It had the first bidet I've ever seen
After an hour of hotel exploring, we started our afternoon in Rome. Our tour guide said that you have to be licenced to give tours in Italy, and he wasn't. The afternoon tour we took wasn't in the itinerary, so the company, EF tours, hadn't scheduled a licensed guide. So we went on a walking tour around the forum and the unification monument with our "Tour Companion, definately not a guide" and went to a church that I can't remember the name of. Rome was looking pretty cool
Our first dinner in Rome was bruscetta and pizza. And good pizza at that! My Dad said that 20 years ago there was a stigma among Italians that pizza was for poor people, but it didn't seem like that was true these days. Dessert was a shock, as we had Nestlé ice cream cones, with peanuts on top. Rachelle wasn't pleased with that.
That night was a small hotel party, with booze from the bar downstairs. It certainly was interesting being of legal age. No bootleggers needed. For fear of sensitive people reading this, no names are mentioned ;). Somebody bought some hash off a random guy outside our hotel. When they brought it back upstairs, they found the texture and colour was a little weird. They still smoked it though. Another individual threw up after taking a puff of a cigar :P.
The mornings were all pretty early. I was sharing a room with Mike, John, and Tyler. I was in bed first, and I think it showed in the morning, when some people had some trouble waking up. 6 AM is pretty early, but my bio-clock or whatever you want to call it was messed anyways, so I got pretty used to getting up at like 6am for the whole trip.
The first thing we went to in the morning was the Vatican. That place is amazingly large. Inside St. Peter's, you simply cannot comprehend how large it is, simply because there is nothing small in there except for the people! The Sistine Chapel was amazingly painted. How Michelangelo did it is far beyond me. Like, wow. Incomprehensible. The amount of artwork in the Vatican museum is amazing too. The whole place just blew my mind. I would have loved to spend more time there just exploring the place. We spent a few hours, but I'm sure one could spend months before even looking at the same stuff twice.
The city of Rome was pretty amazing. The scale of the ruins is something you see in textbooks, but just seeing it in person was amazing. I'd seen ruins from the Roman empire already in Germany, but the stuff in Rome was amazing. We went on a walking tour of the city including the Colosseum, Pantheon, and the Trevi Fountain (thanks Meagan ;)
Thats all for today folks! Come back soon to see when I add photos and write about the rest of the trip!
See Pictures. More to come