Rome If You Want to...

Sooo...tired...

Hello friends! It's been one heckuva long day. We flew out of Boston at 10:55 pm, and our hosts on Air France were clearly into torture via sleep deprivation, because they kept waking us up every 15 minutes:

*poke* Please put down your window shade
*poke* Did you put down your window shade?
*poke* Do you want this creepy plastic cup full of airplane risotto?
*poke* Please put up your window shade
*poke* Do you want this blueberry muffin? It has exactly one blueberry in it, etc.

This torture by sleep deprivation was paired with an even more insidious torture, so horrifying it grieves me to share it with you, but it's a burden Lizzie and I just cannot bear alone. Those of you who are squeamish may wish to look away. While our eyeballs, dry from dehydration, were forced to remain open by the aforementioned prodding, the Air France flight crew cruelly put on the worst possible movie, a movie so terrible it has been added to the Geneva Convention as an inhumane treatment of prisoners of war, that movie being "Never Say Never," starring Justin Bieber.

What the fuck? Who thought that would be the best movie to show on a crowded airplane which had very few tweens on it? Had I the strength, I would've thrown myself out a window, but I was too tired to crack the glass. The plane itself was a double decker, a la the plane in "Snakes on a Plane," which is clearly a far superior movie to "Never Say Never." Yes, middle class Canadian boy, your life has surely been plauged with challenges. You're so brave. Ugh.

We got to Paris around 11:30am (5:30am Boston time) and ran through Charles De Gaulle Airport, making it to our gate for our 2:05pm flight to Rome. We finally landed here about 5:10pm (in a hay field, oddly) and sat in traffic, finally making it to our hotel by 6:10. There we met Gary, our tour guide, who hails from Providence. He told us that we'd have to get back down for dinner by 6:30 (my kingdom for a shower) and then handed us our key. Turns out they gave us the wrong room number, and we tried to break into someone else's room. When the occupant opened, we awkwardly had to explain that we had to kill her because we'd been programmed by Justin Bieber to do so. That being settled, Lizzie went back downstairs, got our real room number, and we quickly changed and ran downstairs to meet our group.

We've made friends already with a family from Providence (WTF Rhode Island?) and a lady who's on her own from Mississippi. We were talking to our Mississippi friend about our rush to get here, and this other crabby woman was like "OH YOU WERE THE ONES WHO WERE LATE? GLAD I STOOD MY GROUND." Foolishly, we thought that meant she had insisted that our tour group remain until we had landed and joined them before taking off for dinner, but she went on to say that she had bullied Gary into promising to leave by 6:30 whether Lizzie and I had made it in or not. Consider yourself our Italy trip Nemesis, Evil!Anne. Before we made it to the restaurnt, we saw the Spainsh Square and the Spanish Steps. At the restaurant we ate a huge meal of food, me having a pile of meat wrapped in more meat, with bread and pasta to boot. The best part about our table was that we were with two teenagers who couldn't drink, so I had to have their share of wine. Lizzie was difficult, and wanted VEGETABLES, and was led away by this delightful octogenrian to the veggie buffet, which I thought was Italian slang for "I'm going to murder you." Luckily she came through the eperience unharmed, and avec vegetables. Tomorrow is the Vatican, et al. I will try to be more coherent then. Buona Serra!

(And I was like baby baby baby OHHH, like baby baby baby Nooooo!)