Italy

It all started a few months back when I was presented with three options for my Christmas vacation. The first option was to spend it alone in Tilburg. Ney. Not a legitimate option. The second option was to go to Scotland. WOW. I would love to go. And then the third option I was presented with was to go to Italy. Guess what I chose.

Don't get me wrong, I will make it to Scotland one day soon, but I just couldn't resist the pull of Italy, the land of extra virgin olive oil and a really big boot.

Today started with a worried night yesterday. The Netherlands and Belgium have had some intense snow storms which knocked out the trains and cancelled a ton of flights yesterday. Needless to say we were worried about today. After deciding to take a train that would give us eight hours to get to the airport that was only 3.5 hours away, I went to bed at 3am. After a few hours of sleep I woke up fairly early to learn that a part of the train tracks in the Netherlands was not running trains through, so we would have to go an alternative route which would get us to the train station in a little less than 4 hours. Problem number one.

My Italian friend and I met at the train station and took the train to Brussels. We had to transfer 2 times. The trains were just about on schedule. From Brussels we took a crowded coach bus to the airport which was about an hour away. RyanAir likes to have airports far so that customers have to work to get there. It seems to be a common theme with that company.

After arriving at the airport three hours (or more) early, we waited. And waited. And waited. The screen that displayed all of the flight information never seemed to show our flight to Venice-Treviso. We asked and were told that the flight was a half hour late. Okay, whatever that's cool. It's not like the world owes me anything so what's the point in feeling down about a little delay...right? Well that half hour delay turned into an hour and a half delay. Always attempting to stay positive, I just smiled and continued to people-watch.

It was dark out by the time we boarded the plane and finally took off. Flying time to Italy was estimated to be an hour and twenty minutes. Awesome! That's soooo fast. I could never fly to Italy in an hour twenty from the States. Anyway, about an hour into the flight the pilot came over the intercom and annouced that we were circling the Venice-Treviso airport waiting for the snow to clear. He said it would be another 50 minutes until we can land as long as the plane doesn't run out of fuel. That was reassuring. We waited and waited in our little seats, hoping for mother nature to pull through. A flight attendant came down the aisle and talked to a neighboring passenger, telling her that we might have to land in an alternative airport if the weather doesn't clear up. Oye Vey.

Finally I feel my ears pop and realized that we were descending. Cool. I watched in awe (as I always do from my seat behind the wing on the right side of the plane) as those multi-million dollar wings flexed their muscles and stretched toward the Earth, allowing the air resistance to push the tail up and the nose down. We were about to land.

We couldn't see the ground until we were very close to the runway because of all of the snow clouds. Down Down Down. We couldn't have been much more than a hundred feet off the ground ready to land when I see the wings rapidly straighten and the engines roared intensely. We were going back into the air. Oh shizer.

This was the first time that I've been in a plane where the pilot missed the runway. Oops. A flight attendant came over the intercom and announced the miss-approach, saying that it was a very common thing. Yeah right. Five minutes later the pilot came over the intercom apologizing and saying that "a cloud got in the way."

By this time about 3 babies were wailing at the top of their lungs and a LOT of Italians were talking real loud with their hands. The pilot said we would try again. "Flight attendants prepare for landing." Down down down. Now I could see the runway coming. I held the seat in front of me, somehow knowing it would be a rough landing. I just had this feeling that no matter what, the pilot was going to try to land and not back out of this descent because of self-pride. We touched down going VERY fast and everyone started to clap. I didn't because I knew the landing wasn't over. The plane took an exceedingly long time to finally stop once we hit the ground. (I think so that we didn't slip on the snow). It wasn't until after touchdown that we realized how much it was really snowing. I turned and looked at the girl sitting next to us as she wiped away tears in her eyes. Wow. She was legit crying. People were really scared.

As I was about the exit the plane the pilot stepped out of the cabin. He paused after stepping out and looked at the flight attendants. This is the part that blows my mind. He displayed a sly Scottish smile to the flight attendants, and then mumbled some words to them. I couldn't hear exactly what he said, but it was something to the effect of "oops."

I couldn't help but smile as I walked down the steps onto the runway. I was in Italy! And there was snow on the ground. Lots of it. My friends' father picked us up in his black Honda and we navigated through the city of Treviso. Although there was snow on the ground, it still looked pretty beautiful with lots of greenage and hills. We arrived at a really nice house where you have to put a code into a keyboard in order for the gate to open to let you in the driveway. For dinner we had some authentic passata di fagioli and salad. It tasted so good following that adventure. After dinner I got introduced to my bed for the week and to a bathroom with a bday (not really sure how to spell bday, but it's the thing that you stand over that shoots water up your butt to clean it) (no it doesn't replace an enima) (yes, they did find some in Sadam Husseins palaces when they raided them).

I'm looking forward to an adventurous week in southern Europe (ç: