When I returned home from a visit up north NJ, I went to purchase some bread, cheese, shampoo, soap, and snacks for my flight to Seattle. I don’t want to fly on an empty stomach. Especially that they won’t be serving meals on the flight.
The next morning, I woke up at 4 am, totally forgetting about day light savings time. I should have woke up at 5 instead. So I stayed up to make hoagies, surfing the net, and racing after Grace. All my gear was already set to go, my clothes and camera gear. So I was ready! Ready to head over to Seattle, coffee heaven, a city full of vegetarian food, and .. rain.
My flight was out of the Philadelphia International Airport. And then the airline did the lamest thing- change my flight itinerary at the last minute. I will be flying from Philadelphia to Chicago to Denver to Seattle. More time in the airplane and higher chances of losing my luggage. :(
When I boarded the plane, I had to find my seat which was all the way in the back by the window. As a kid I loved window seats, but now I rather get the aisle seat. And to make it worse, my seat was next to the wing. Definite thrill kill, not to mention the Boeing 757’s paint was chipping away, creaking, and well really old.
I was situated and fell asleep. When I woke up the flight attendants began serving beverages and the coffee was Starbucks. What a coincidence! I am going to Seattle, home of Starbucks! Well I am going to try all the other brands out there as well, but I want to try it from the motherland! ha! That was what Kyra once told me. Speaking of Starbucks, while I will be in Seattle, Lily will be gone from Starbucks in Princeton. :( She was really nice! First Laura, now Lily.
Digging into my pockets and then into my carry on bag, I couldn’t find my ipod! Crap! Where did it go?! I need to listen to music or else I will die! Well not literally die, but, you get the point. Do I take out the macbook pro and listen to the music off of that? Lo and behold I found my old Creative Zen. Good ol’faithful! Just a pity that I can’t sync it with iTunes. Silly proprietary bull.
I landed in Chicago and then quickly boarded my flight to Denver. An elderly lady was my seat mate. But it was a really short flight so that was ok.
We landed in Denver at 12:40 Denver time and it was a 2 hour layover. ::grumble::
But it was a nice airport! And Free wifi!! Hooray! So I did some chatting and surfing, while calling home and downloading Snow Patrol’s latest album. After it finished downloading I listened to it and enjoyed it. The flight to Seattle was here at 2:46 pm.
But this flight was even worse, window seat, in the back crammed with two fairly large guys. Why me? It was going to be a long 2 hour flight. Sleep seemed to have come faster than usual, and I slept all the way through the flight. When I woke up it was 5 pm seattle time and we were there. And boy was it dark out!
Luckily for me my luggage wasn’t lost and I was able to pick up my rental car quickly. I had a small Chevy Cobalt. A pretty tight fit ride, but oh well it was just me in the car. Logging into the GPS, I drove to my hostel, the Green Tortoise. Which got me lost a couple times before finding my hostel.
I found an overnight parking garage, which was a block away from the hostel which was right outside of the Pikes Place Marketplace! That was good because that was my first place that I wanted to see! After checking in, I went back out to do some quick night shots, found an adult store around the corner, haha, and took some shots of the crowd in front of the hostel in line for a concert. When I went back into the hostel, I had some free Mexican food and met some interesting people traveling.
An empty Pikes Place marketplace
hmmm...
Who's normal?
After jet lag, day light savings time shift, and uncomfortable flying I went right to bed.
I went to Seattle in Nov. of 2008 for a week. I had frequent flyer miles that I had to use up, so this was my destination of choice in the US! I sent my absentee ballot for Obama since I knew that I would be away during that week of the elections! Oh man was tension high! Especially when i was on the ferry back from Olympia National Park during the election day, I had to call Eric for updates!
Nov. 2nd to the 8th.
I packed light for this trip, since it was a week journey and I wanted to practice to pack light. I packed 2 pairs of pants, three pairs of long shirts, 8 undies, five pairs of socks, a towel, poncho, umbrella, and toiletry stuff. I only had my 30D at the time as well as the 24-70 and my macbook pro.
I am not sure why I chose to go to Seattle, but I did. Maybe it was because of Starbucks…
I woke up at 3:40 am. I couldn’t sleep, when I did it was very difficult to sleep. So I got up and checked out to get back to Terminal 5. I had to wait till 5 AM for the trams to start running so I could get to Terminal 3.
Ugh!
So I hung around the benches for a little bit. Realizing that I still had some pounds on me from my Ireland trip, I bought some coffee.
When the time came I got onto the Heathrow express to terminal 3. But first I met an Indian couple who told me about how they got kicked out last night trying to sleep in the airport. the airports are afraid people will do something dangerous. Lame.
I might have slept outside, well sit on the curb for a couple hours, but then I would have probably gotten into trouble. In any case, I got to terminal 3. Checked in and went through security really fast. I had to wait till American Airlines 099 to fly home at 6:50 AM. I still had some pounds left over, so I bought a bagel breakfast with my remaining pounds.
It took a while for my gate number to show up and when it did, I was bolting towards my plane! It was a good 30 minute walk from the waiting room to the gate… holy crap! By the time I got to the gate I had to go through another security check in and then a body search. what? I thought I already gotten through security! They scoped my shoes, my gear, and did a quick body search. Like I could bring anything dangerous on me while being in the airport.
7:20 rolled around and we boarded the airline. A Boeing 777! It was huge! It made me really want to fly in a Boeing 787! I had the window seat again, but at least this time the seatmate wasn’t huge. My flight was towards Chicago- AA’s hub.
During the flight, I watched Bride Wars. I know wedding planning is crazy and all, but this made light of the planning. It was also kind of scary in a way. People go through lots of lengths in their planning and sometimes turn into bridezillas…
When I made it to Chicago I went through customs and then boarded my next plane to Newark.
By the time I made it home, it was 7 pm.
My adventure to Italy was over, ups and downs, it was a great experience and awesome adventure!
I was really gasy this morning. I don’t know why!
I woke up at 7:50 am to brush, use the facilities, and pack my gear. I had to leave Italy today. Today sucks! I had some breakfast and sent an email to my family that I was getting ready to leave Italy.
I headed out with Jason, who was leaving for Florence, to Termini. At the self-service booths we parted ways and made our merry way to our respected trains. I had to go to Leonardo Express to get to the Fumicino Airport, with my flight being at 1:05 today there was no point in dilly dallying.
Douche bags acted like they were service people when they “helped” people bring their luggage out and then holding out their hands for tips. They tried that to me, but I just walked on without their “help.”
When I got to the airport, it was about 10:20 am and had to go find British Airways port. There was a fairly large line of people checking in. When I got to the booth, this really nice lady booked me in and I spotted that she has two different eye colors! WHOA! It was blue and brown!
I smiled and said thank you and went on my way to the security check in when she ran up to me asked if I wanted my luggage to go all the way to Newark or to London where my layover was. I chose Newark.
Going through security, I went to buy some lunch. And then some keychains as I remembered to buy some souvenirs.
I walked to my terminal, to write in my journal only to think that I need new reading material. What to read… I went to the book store and looked around. Looked and looked, and figured, Under the Tuscan Sun might be a nice read send off.
My quick fix to my broken camera bag.
Having read some of the first parts of the book, I could totally see myself living in Tuscany!
1:05 pm
Time to board my flight.
Ciao, Italy!!
In the air, the BA stewardesses started to hand out sandwiches. Being a vegetarian, one of the stewardesses ran back to get me a cheese sandwich! That was really nice of her! 
And then the trouble came. I arrived at Heathrow 5 and went through customs, which took about 50 minutes to go through. The trouble came as I was going to be here for a day.
So my task was to look for a hotel. Well at first I wanted to just sleep in the hotel, or rather just stay over night and not sleep. Just like when I was in thailand, I wanted to just stay over night. But apparently I was told that I could not because Heathrow closes at 11 pm and re opens at 4 am. So I went to one of the booths to find a hotel. There was only one hotel in the airport and the rest were pretty far from the airport for my really early flight tomorrow. And the price for the hotel that I got was 200 or something pounds. Fuck.
I really should have chose a flight without this crazy layover! When I first planned this out, I thought I could go into London to hang out with a friend and then come back, but that didn’t work as the request went ignored. Oh well, part of the adventure, Eric would tell me.
I ended up staying inside the hotel room, not eating anything and watching old music videos.
The last full day in Italy has arrived. Do I sleep in, relax and chill or do I explore one last time?
I went to eat breakfast and then headed off not knowing what I would do for today. I went to the Termini station to see what I could do around Rome. Sperlonga? According to Lonely Planet Sperlonga was a beach village. That sounds nice! Too bad i don’t have any swimming clothes.
When got to Sperlonga, the bus was filled to the brim. Like a bus in Rome! It took some time for the bus to get to the first stop, which was where we all dispersed from the bus.
The water was clear and clean! I took my shoes off and walked in, but not too far in as I didn’t have extra clothes and my camera would be very exposed. So I hiked around the town. It was like an endless resort town. So I went up and down hills of beach and walkways. Boredom has crept in.
By 1 pm I was at the top and decided to go look for the bus stop. Which to my discovery were none. At least posted. I had to explore around to find the stop for the return trip so I found someone who told me where it was. In front of the supermarket and I just missed the bus.
Crap!
So I waited around for the bus to come. Which came by 2 pm. When I got to the train station, the actual place to buy the ticket was at a tobacco shop right at the waiting booth. argh.
I got back to Termini at 3 pm and went back to the hostel to relax. Meanwhile I charged my gear and rested up. I went back out to get a slab of pizza for a snack. I love how Italy sells pizza by the weight! I got a whole ton of pizza!
At 6:30 I went to this place called Mama angela’s to eat for dinner. The place was really elegant, but the staff was a joke. They horsed around a lot and took forever with the meals.
I met my mystery roommates who kicked me the previous night, Andrea and Sean from California. We chatted for a little while with Jason, a Canadian.
By 9 pm we departed and I was off to bed.
