Happy New Year

Happy New Year from Europe, me and the Rome carabineri police who spent the evening sitting around sipping champagne and posing for photos from tourists.

My trip down to Italy was 'great success' and loads of fun. After finishing christmas celebrations in Poland with all of my cousins and aunts and friends I flew down to Rome, through Milan, to meet with the newly Indian Paul and his family (his mom, sister, cousin and sister's beau). As usually happens with travelling, the trip got off to an perfect start with a 3 hour delay in Milan due to fog and lineups. I don't EVER want to fly Ryanair again during the holidays. It was pandemonium at this airport: people running, yelling, punching, biting. The lineup for passport control stretched ACROSS the terminal and down the stairs to the basement bathroom. Ridiculous x10.

But, fun times aside, I made it to Roma and Paul was waiting for me with my name (however inappropriatley he'd spelled it) on a piece of paper, looking like he'd just been dragged through a desert. Which he had.

Our apartment provided by Paul's mom was fantastic, aside from the fact that I broke the heaters. It was huge and I was allowed to sleep on a couch, instead of my usual floor/table. Not only that but it was about 500m from the Coliseum. Company was great and the entire trip really felt like a 'family holiday', except this time Paul and I were playing the role that my dad always played.

Everyone else: "Aw guuuuuys....I want some McDOnalds"
Dzido and Paul: "No! One more church! It's beautiful, you have to see it! Pick up the pace! You, in the back! Stop crying!"

The city is stunning historically, so much to see around every corner. I remembered a lot, but so much of it was just like visiting a new city for me. We went through the Coliseum, the Forum, the Vatican, St.Peters, the Spanish Steps. And we balanced all of this walking with some nice breaks at Italian restaurants where much was tasted and tried.

New Year's was really nice. We somehow managed to get a place at this restaurant (super last minute) across from the coliseum. So that the photo just above was what I saw as I sat and sipped on some bubbly. Then at midnight the city went crazy with fireworks and we got to watch the old roman ruin lit up with colours all around. Laura could barely contain her excitment, I took a picture. Tom tried to impersonate Laura barely containing her excitment, I took a picture of it.

I sat around looking smug and enjoying the view of the old city.

After all the hooplah of New Years with champagne and fireworks and fancy hats, our second to last day was just as cool. We decided to go visit the ruins of Pompei, perfectly preserved under the hardened ashes of the volcano Vesuvius. Since we had such a big group we decided to rent a car. Unfortunatly they only had the sweetest of sweet sportscars left so we packed the lot of us in our new six-gear Alfa Romeo wonder and took off. I'm not kidding you guys, this car drove like a big stick of butter across a hot frying pan, smooooth and very seductivley. I had so much fun because no one else drove. The only hard part was getting used to city driving which can only be described as: chaos. Really, does no one realize that there is a shortage of rules in this country? At times you could be driving down a FIVELANE ROAD only to have it merge, with no prior indication, into one! And suddenly you look around and its pandemonium, people honking, yelling, Dzido stalling the car. Pandemonium

Pompei was sweet. At one point we were listening to the decription of the volcanic eruption, when the sky began to grow dark and it started to hail M&m's, ouch. Very scary. The amount of the city that you can walk through is almost too much. But the trip went off with only the requisite number of problems that were quickly fixed, and we all had fun listening to people snore in the car.

The past two days have been a blur though. We drove Paul's family to the airport at 4 am, then the next day we took off back to POland at 4 am ourselves. Two flights, one train and a streetcar over 12 hours, woo hoo! I slept like this -->