My sister and her boyfriend visited for a week before the holidays, bringing my mum with them as a nice surprise! It was a lovely week, the weather was beautiful, and apart from having a horrendous cold, I had a great time. We went skiing, (got sunburnt) and finally I got my much awaited trip to the zoo! We ate too much and generally had lots of fun, whilst working a little bit inbetween.It was so nice to see them all.
After my family's visited, there was one week at work before the holidays, and I have never known a week to drag as much in my life! Finally, Friday arrived and in was definitely ready for a 2 week break, although I think my holiday was busier than my general working weeks are!
On Saturday, Adam arrived in Lourdes to visit me for a week. I met him and we missed the Tain back so had to wait 2 hours for the next one, dommage! The trains in France are so peculiar, there can be 2 straight after each other and then not another for hours! No fear though, we sat in a cafe and drank hot chocolate while we waited. We had a lovely week, doing various things such as skiing (didnt get sunburnt), walking around in the beautiful weather, and eating too much (noticed a pattern yet?!) we also went to Kim's for a lovely sunday dinner, and spent 2 days by the sea in Biarritz which was lovely.
Adam flew home on Saturday, and I left for Italy on Sunday. So Saturday evening was spent trying to pack everything I wanted to take into a hand luggage sized suitcase- not easy!
We left sunday morning to catch the train to Toulouse, having to walk to the station since the lazy French bus drivers don't start work until 1pm on Sundays. Sundays in France are a joke!
I won't bore you with every detail of my trip, but I had an amazing time. We spent 2 nights in milan, 2 in Florence and 3 in rome. Florence was my favourite city, it was so pretty, even in the aim. I definitely want to return when it's sunny.
We saw all the typical sights, had a lot of laughs (normally just before we went to sleep when we all seemed to get the giggles) and ate too much (serious pattern emerging now).
Now as always there's always some bad to go with the good, and we did seem to have a lot of bad luck in Italy. However, nothing too major and all things that we look at now and laugh about. To start, we found out we couldn't check in to our first hotel after 9pm. Our plane didnt even land until half 9 so this was definitely a problem. After a stressful day of ringing several different people( thanks abbi), we came to the conclusion that we had nowhere to stay that night, and no refund. Luckily, we managed to stay at the airport ibis, and so weren't homeless for a night!
We also had some bad luck with the hostels. The Florence one was dirty, had a creepy old man running it and just generally wasn't a nice place. In rome, the bunk beds broke (very amusant actually) the room was freezing and probably slightly damp, and at one point someone had to climb out of the window as the lock on the door was dodgey! Anyway, we survived.
In rome, on our first night, we went out for tea slightly later than expected. We met a friend who I go to uni with and had a delicious meal. We then had to rush for the last bus, which, to cut a long story shot, dropped us off 3 miles away from our hostel. (Lesson of the week: just because a bus stops on the same road as your hostel, it doesn't mean it is the right end of the road, in fact, it's probably 3 miles away at the other end of the road.) so, as it was late, and there was a creepy man about, we did the sensible thing and asked the nearest hotel to ring us a taxi. We then waited in the hotel reception for at least half an hour while our taxi took its time to arrive. We were glad to be somewhere safe, but lets just say it seemed a bit dodgey that people were checking in at 1am, in fact, one woman checked in twice...
Anyway, again, we survived and were all fine.
Our next bout of bad luck was less scary, in fact quite funny. I was tucking into a cheesecake at a restaurant, and thought it seemed very dry. I thought it was just the Italian way and was disappointed not to be enjoying my dessert. Abbi, however, was enjoying her chocolate cake until she looked at it properly and saw bits of green in it - mould! Bex also found it in hers, and so it seems my cheesecake wasn't just Italian style, but stale. The waiter was very apologetic and gave us free profiteroles, but lets just say we were put off, eurgh.
All in all, I had a great week with the girls, and returned to France a happy, full up, and tired girl!
I got so used to saying grazie and ciao and si that I actually struggled to speak French when I got back!
The first week back has flown by, and there's now only 5 more weeks of teaching left - scary!
Bye for now xxx
