So this week's Throwback Thursday will take us on my journey from Switzerland to Rome, and will include a brief description of the scariest moment of my life. It was a beautiful day in Switzerland, when we boarded to train from Cully to Geneva to catch our flight to Rome.
While in Geneva, we made a mad dash from the train station to see the famous fountain before we had to head to the airport. (I'm leaving a lot out...like Sean's two hour massage, me almost passing out from hunger.....Whitney getting angry at Sean's fashion advice. Let's just say we were all a bit testy.) Here we are at the fountain. I call this our official backpacking through Europe picture.
We get to the airport and the chaos begins. First thing, we board the plane......it's an airbus. I don't know if you all remember back to last summer, but there were two crashes in two weeks tht killed hundreds of people--one from Brazil to France and one near India. Anyway, they were both airbus planes. I'm terrified of flying. I know, I do it a lot, but I hate every minute of it. As soon as I heard on the news about the second crash of an airbus, the first thing I did was be sure I was not flying on one from here to Europe or back. I wasn't. Somehow, forgot to check about from Geneva to Rome. On top of that, I had promised my dad I wouldn't be flying on an airbus. His encouraging words before I left of, "If you die over there, I'm going to be really pissed off," were ringing in my head.
Anyway, we live through the flight---no problems, and we are trying to find our way from the airport in Rome to our hotel. I had been told to take the train, but it was hard to figure out and cousin Sean was impatient, so we got a cab. Thus began the horror.
Let me start with I get terrible motion sickness. Frequently. I've puked my way across America--California, Arizona, Kentucky, Washington, DC, Dallas, almost New York.....so I've made it habit to always take the barf bag from a plane. That way I have a stash. You can probably see where this is going.
It's about 95 degrees, 99% humidity and rush hour. The cab starts down the tiny street next to the airport, which is lined with cars on both sides. There is barely room for cars coming and going to meet each other. What does our lovely driver do? Goes like 85 mph, weaving between cars, passing on what must have been no passing zones, I swear we were as close as someone can get to a head-on without having one. Whitney and I are in the back praying. Sean's laughing in the front trying to be tough. I have one photo of this time. You know it's bad when I'm not snapping photos. You'll notice it's blurry....pictures look that way when you're going 90 miles an hour.
So long story short, it takes us an hour to get to our hotel. It's hot, sticky, nasty, cab driver dude is driving like a maniac, and I start to feel sick. I hand the camera to Whitney and take out my bag from the plane. She's traveled with me enough, she knows what that means. I tell Sean I'm going to be sick, he laughs. I held it as long as I could. As we pull up to the front door of the hotel, I could not take it anymore and the bag is put to good use. The flustered driver can't imagine what caused this.....YOU, moron! Here's an idea how I felt an hour later. (I can't believe I'm posting such a terrible picture, but it's needed to give you the full idea)
Anyway, we survived the plane, train and automobile trips and only used one bag. Oh yea, here's a picture of our lovely hotel. And no, this isn't one bedroom, it's the whole thing. I'm standing in the door taking it. That's the one bed we all three shared for three nights. Hey, when you start off yacking in the street, suddenly, everything is a step up. When in Rome, right?
Stay tuned next week for our wonderful day at the Vatican!
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