Day 2 Part 1

After a night slept on the (cold) floor of the airport, we wake up in various stages of sleep deprivation, eager to get the hell out of there. Before i know whats happening, Sara and Katri are dragging back a random, suspicious looking guy. "Couldn't they have at least waited until we're out of the airport?" I think to myself, compleatly unsuprised. I soon learn that he is just another poor slob who can't resist Sara's odor (or something) and is not letting her out of his sight. Sara is quite unhappy about this. The guy (Massimo) wants to escort (aka follow) us to Rome, and we reluctantly agree. So we follow him to a train that ended up costing 10€ less than we'd anticipated, and had no map to show where it was even going. This caused a lot of worry in some, and we weren't quite sure where he was taking us.

Our fears were unfonded, and we got safely to the city. Apparently it wasn't the train we were intending to take, and we soon found out we were in the out skirts of the town. Which meant a lot of walking with huge bags around Rome in a +30 heat. Great.

Ditching Massimo was more difficult than was expected, but after a lot of hinting and finally Sara bursting out that we wanted to go have some breakfast alone, we continued our journey alone. We are incredibly hungry, and park ourselves into the first cafe that we find. There we enjoy some unfreash bakery food and Sara got the oportunity to taste some hot chocolate, which was literally, melted chocolate. Yum.

We then continue onwards and find (after a lot of walking) the tourist-info. We obviously learned something from our last trip, and now know that asking for nearest hostels from the tourist info is way smarter than just wondering around. So we manage to call a hostel, where they promise us a room for 17€ per night. We get (vague) directions to the place, and on we go.

Of course, we get lost on the way, and have to ask for directions from Italian locals. When we do reach the hostel, we are introduced to the Italian way of scamming money off of tourists. Long story short, the people kept increasing the cost of a room (its a chain hotel, so you have to be members to be able to stay over, and thats why you need to pay the membership costs, and when you do, you'll get a disctount, but you need to renew the membership every day, by the way, the linnens for the beds cost extra, and oh the locks for the closests costs extra too etc. on and on) And then they had the gall to tell us that you could get into the rooms eariest at 2 o'clock (it was 11) and no, you can't put your stuff anywhere and no, you can't go up and use the bathrooms. By this point we were all too tired to find another hostel, so we just decided to hand out at the reseption area (must have been a strange sight, a bunch of travel-weary girls laying in various degrees of sleep on the floor of the room). Apparanely we weren't good for the business, since they soon came to tell us that we can already go up to the rooms. Needless to say, we went up and fell into the nearest bed and had a nice nap.

Day 1

Okay, so our fairly ambitious trek of visiting both Italy and Greece in just two weeks began in from the Helsinki-Vantaa airport. The weather in Finland was sunny and warm, making my attempts to drag my (heavy) rinkka from my parents house to the airport less than fun. It also gave me a glimpse (although a fairly moderate one) of how this dragging business would feel like.

So after almost missing the stop i was suppoused to get off on (the departure terminals had changed just before our trip, making me very confused) I walk into the (correct) terminal and see a bunch of excited young women sitting in a circle on the floor (which was also a good indication on what we would be doing a lot on this trip). They rudely laughed at me for being late, as i am usually the first person there.

So we check out luggage, and are not too suprised that Tea's bag is the heaviest. We have a bet on how many shoe pairs she brought with her, but we are suprised to hear she only brought two. Apparently, a lot of the weight came from various food supplies she is carrying. After the safety-checks we decide to go have a bit of coffee and food at the local Robert's coffee.

The plane ride is as painful as it usually is for me, and we land in Rome at around 12o'clock. Our stay in Italy begins very nicely. We ended up waiting for Kristiina's luggage for an hour, while getting practically no help from the locals. This too would soon to become a typical situation for us in Italy. After we do manage to recover the lost luggage, we head towards our planned sleeping area. The trip isn't long as we had decided (to save money and nerves) to not go looking for a hostel for that night, but to instead sleep at the airport.

This night was to be the first of many badly-slept nights on the trip.

*cue dramatic music*