Indeed, a lot has happened since my last post. This isn't surprising, given that my last post was nearly 2 months ago. Some of the things that have happened are:
- Weekend trip to Salisbury
- The Isle of Wight Festival
- Marissa and Cathy have arrived (and disappeared again)
- Mum has arrived (but hasn't disappeared yet...)
- Returned to Vieste, and experienced World Cup mayhem with the Italians!
Salisbury was nice (except that it pissed down with rain the entire time), Isle of Wight was amazingly good, Riss and Cath's appearance (and subsequent disappearance) was entertaining, but the topics that stick out for me are Mum's arrival and the trip to Italy...
I don't think Mum knew what she was in for when she decided to come and visit her sons in London. It's been quite an experience for her, considering she hasn't left Australia since arriving there as a little girl, aged 4. She's been coping with it alright with the odd comment about how crap the food is, how dirty it is, how many people there are here, etc - stuff that we're all aware of after living here for a while. I might even dare to say that she has enjoyed some of our little trips out around London, such as our visit to the rose garden in Regent's Park. That was all good, until it came time to venture over to Italy...
Low on cash, I decided to send Mum, Age and Beck ahead of me to explore Rome, before getting them to travel down south to Vieste, where I would meet them for the weekend. Seemed like a grand idea at the time. Unfortunately I forgot how difficult it actually is to get to Vieste, considering where it is located (Gargano Peninsula, southern Italy). It's fine if you're already down there, but getting down there was the interesting part! Apparently the closest city you could fly to was Bari, some 300km south. It wasn't until later that someone told us you could fly to Pescara and get a bus from there. If I'd known that, I wouldn't have listened to my brother and booked flights with Alitalia (whom I have now nick-named "Almerde"), and instead booked my flights with Ryanair. Why you ask?
Simple. Alitalia SUCK SH*T! Firstly, to get to Bari, you need to change in Milan (after trudging all the way to shitty Heathrow). With Ryanair, it was a direct flight from London Stansted (the airport nearer to us). Secondly, the in-flight meal and service was absolute crap. I'd rather go without, like with Ryanair. Thirdly, the delays, and finally, the fact that they lost our luggage. Here's the wrap-up of our trip:
Thursday: Meant to leave Heathrow at 6am to fly to Milan for our connecting flight. Didn't leave until 6:45am, which meant that when we arrived in Milan, we missed our connecting flight. Apparently there was a bus waiting on the tarmac to take us to our connecting flight, but no-one told us that, did they? After getting into the airport and discovering we'd missed our flight, we then had to wait 5 hours for the next flight, after being promised our luggage would be on the plane. Finally arrive in Bari at 5pm (instead of 11:30am), and discover they've lost our luggage. Not only that, but because we arrived so late, there was no way we were going to be able to get to Vieste, so we had to stay in Bari for the night. We reported our luggage missing and were given a reference number scribbled onto a piece of paper because the ancient printer at the airport wasn't working.
Friday: Called the airport - no news on our luggage. Decide to shop in Bari for a bit (awesome shopping!), then make our way to Vieste. This involved a 1-hour Eurostar trip to Foggia, then a 2-hour coach ride to Vieste. Upon arrival, we discover our accomodation hadn't been booked at the place we wanted - instead it was booked 2km down the road away from everyone else. Luckily my family came to the rescue and put us up in their hotel for nothing. Very pleased about that, especially after the saga of the accomodation (story for another time). Ended up getting rather trolleyed on 4 bottles of Rose from the local area.
Saturday: Called the airport - still no news on the luggage. Decide to forget about it and enjoy some beach-side action instead. Got an early night in preparation for our boat trip the next day.
Sunday: Didn't bother calling the airport. Went on a boat cruise to visit various caves along the amazingly beautiful coastline. Was fun on the boat. The insane Italians that were driving it purposely drove it too fast so that everyone on board got wet at various stages during the trip. The scenary was lovely though - shall post pictures on Flickr soon. Returned to Vieste for some AMAZING seafood for lunch. Upon return from lunch, find out that Alitalia has called. They'd found our luggage and had sent it via courier to our hotel. Hoorah! I called them just in case to make sure, and managed to decipher from the guy who couldn't speak a word of English that they had in fact already sent it, even though I asked them to leave it in Bari if they found it. No matter. Now we just hoped that the bags arrived in time, as we were leaving to go back home the next day! Hit the beach again to take our minds off that little issue. Upon return to the hotel, we found our bags had FINALLY arrived...
Sunday night: World Cup fever! After a shower at the hotel, we ran around the Old Town following my brother, trying to find a lamp shop before the final started. We had been told that the game started at 9pm, but as we were wondering around the town, we noticed that people were gearing up to watch as the national anthems were being played - at 7:50pm! Turns out it started at 8, so when we arrived at the shop we were looking for, it was closed. Pretty much ran back to the hotel for dinner (free, otherwise we wouldn't have bothered!) and to watch the final. Watched some of it over dinner, then finished watching it with some older Italians in their cafe across the road. They were all wearing these hats they'd made out of newspaper. Some had even gone to the trouble of painting little Italian flags on them! At full-time when it was still 1-1, one of them got up and burnt his. Was quite funny watching the final with them. During the penalty shootout, the lady who owned the place started sweeping and cleaning up - apparently she couldn't bare to watch!
As soon as the final penalty shot went in, the celebrations began. Almost immediately, people came out of wherever they were watching the final, and started making noise with whatever they had available to them - fireworks, mouths, horns, whatever. One guy had gone to the trouble of extracting car horns and fixing them to a trolley with a car battery so he could wonder around town and make lots of noise! We wondered up to the main piazza, following the hundreds of cars, covered in Italian flags and Italian people. They came into town on whatever they had - cars, tractors, pick-up trucks - it was insane! We stood and watched for about an hour waiting for it to calm down, but it just got louder and more insane. Eventually we decided to try and get a drink - nup. The quiet winebar we had been going to was shut (of course!), so we headed back to the hotel for a few beers. At about 1am, there was a MASSIVE fireworks display down on the main beach, and it was damn LOUD! After that, things calmed down a little. We retired to our quiet room at about 2am for some well-deserved rest. Forza Azzuri! :-)
Monday: Time to leave. Got on the coach back to Foggia at 10am. Our flight was scheduled to leave Bari at 5:10pm, so we thought we'd better get a wiggle on. Were meant to get back into Foggia at about 12:30, but the coach driver decided he had to get out at just about every stop and have a ciggarette, so we just managed to get the 1pm train from Foggia to Bari. Arrived in Bari at 2:30 and decided to get a cab to the airport - we weren't taking any chances! Get to the airport, and low and behold, the flight is delayed until 6:30pm, giving us about an hour to get our connecting flight in Milan at 8:30. Get to Milan at about 7:30, go to our transfer gate, and the 8:30 has been changed to 9:55. Lovely. So we sit around eating crappy over-priced airport food until we finally depart for Heathrow. But not before being mauled to death by mozzies on the transfer bus!
All in all, quite the adventure, and one I won't be repeating in a hurry. Took a few days to recover from all the travelling! Won't be flying with Alitalia EVER again, and if you read this, take heed, and tell everyone you know - Alitalia are rubbish!!!
The End.
