We left our hotel in Milan at 6:45 am to walk to the train station. This is about a 20 minute walk but is more difficult when you have 33 girls, most with two suitcases that weight almost 50 lbs each. Once we got to the station we waited around till our 8 o'clock train was announced. Once it got in we took our luggage to some storage cars, we ended up using two of these car because of how many bags we are all traveling with. Then we had to run back along the cars since the baggage car was car 11 and we were in car 1 to get to our seats. Once on the train there was some craziness over booked seats and sitting in the wrong seats and some of the girls arguing. Kind of embarrassing. Finally we were on our way to Paris!!! Goodbye Milan!!! Note: Out of this trip Milan has been my least favorite city to visit.
Once on the train we had a quiz about Milan from one of our Professors at 1:30. Unfortunately for this train ride, we were having issues. The train kept stopping it seemed every hour or 20 mins. Then at one point reported some technical difficulty, it was hard to understand in French and Italian. We sat there for another 30 minutes or so. Instead of getting into Paris at 3:30 we got in around 5 or 6 pm. We had a study abroad FSU official meet us at the station to give us our tickets for the metro, along with one of our professors daughter and husband.
We headed down into the metro, we were told there would be some steps but also some escalators and elevators. This however was not the case. Instead we had to go up and down about 5 flights of stairs between our change of metros and at the end at our stop at Bastille. This is where my suitcase decided it had enough and to snap the handle in half. I was so exhausted at this point I almost laughed just because of how crazy the travel plan had been for the day. Every girl was struggling with their baggage and very nice strangers stopped to help some of us get them up and down stairs. Originally and in our packet of travel information there was supposed to be a van to take our luggage from Milan to Paris but because of "insufficient funds" this wasn't arranged. That night we were supposed to go to the Eiffel Tower to view it at night but out of exhuastion we pleaded with our professors to make it the next day. We all just wanted to rest from our travels. Some of my friends and I walked around Bastille area and found a sushi restaurant to have dinner in. This is a very good area for cafes and to watch street performers. We also went with one the girls to find her cousin at this church she is working with. We found it and they were doing an amazing musical presentation inside.
No comments:
Post a Comment