Contiiiiiiki, follow the right guide!

Dec 27 – I got up and finished my packing gradually. When I checked to see the status of my flight, it said it was delayed one hour. I got a ride to the tube station from my hosts as they were on their way to another meal with friends, and we had to stop for them to do a little last minute shopping along the way.

I said my good-byes at the tube station and got on the train. I got to the correct terminal without any problems and checked my bags, went through security and headed to my gate. I had been rushing a little bit because the board didn’t say that my flight was delayed, but since I got through security nice and quickly, I still would have made it on time.

I got to the gate and started writing in my journal to pass the time and that was when I realized I had lost the panda button from my bag.

When we finally started boarding, we were behind. Then it took forever because everyone kept having to be assigned different seats because we had gotten put on a different plane. Then we had to take a bus to the plane.

We sat on the tarmac for a long time before we finally took off. I had heard that Made in Dagenham was a good movie, so I tried watching it, but I only made it partway through before falling asleep. Luckily for me (since I was hungry), they gave us a meal of a tuna sandwich (and I like tuna).

We landed in Rome and I had no problems getting through customs (it seems like England is a lost harder to get into than most of these other countries). The guy who stamped my passport didn’t even look at it. I bought myself some Euros and then I got a ticket to the central train station. When I got there, I looked around in a grocery store a bit and then got myself an overpriced taxi to the hotel.

Flight to Rome.

Waiting for the train to take me into town.

When I checked in I found out that the whole tour group was out doing a night time walking tour of London, and since my roommate had the key to our room, the concierge had to let me in. I also found out that I had missed the introduction meeting. I sat in the incredibly hot hotel room and waited to meet my roomie. I was really tired, but I stuck it out by writing in my journal as I waited.

I heard people starting to come back and shortly after that I met Bianca from Australia. I wasn’t surprised that she was Australian since I had heard that there were always a lot of Australians on these tours.

The next morning (December 28), we got our early wake-up call and headed to breakfast. I met someone from Toronto, and a few other people. Then we all got on the bus and left for the Colosseum. Our local guide for the walking our was fantastic. He was 74 (or so our main tour guide told us), and he not only seemed to know a little bit about everything, but he really trucked through town. He also took us through the Roman Forum before we had a break for lunch.

Arriving at the Colosseum.

Our tour guide.

Inside the Colosseum.

View from the Colosseum.

Outside the Colosseum.

At the Roman Forum.

I went to lunch with a fairly big group of people to a little restaurant where we all ate the pasta special. It was pretty good. After that, we got back on the bus to go to the Vatican.

On our drive to the Vatican.

Our local guide continued to lead us through the Vatican as we looked through some of the museums, the Sistine Chapel and the basilica. It was all incredibly beautiful, but the Sistine Chapel felt a bit anti-climactic for me. It wasn’t as amazing as I was hoping it would be.

Outside the Vatican.

Our tour guide told us to take a photo of this to pretend we took a photo of the Sistine Chapel (because you can't take photos inside it).

Inside one of the museums.

In one hall, the ceilings were covered with trompe l'oeil (illusion, "trick the eye") paintings like this, made to look like carvings.

Inside the basilica. Each one of those letters is approximately 5 feet tall.

Outside the basilica.

After we finished going through the Vatican, we had to wait for the bus for a while. Once we got back to the hotel, we had a bit of free time before the optional dinner. Our tour guide Angie decided that the place we were originally scheduled to go to wouldn’t be as good as it normally was (they weren’t going to do the show that was originally supposed to be part of the dinner or something), so she decided to take us to a different restaurant.

We headed downtown on a bus and got to the restaurant. The dinner was pretty good since we could order whatever we wanted, and I had fun at my table. We learned some Aussie slang, and had a good time. The only strange part was how staggered the meals were. I had my food way before anyone else, and then they pretty much forgot one girl’s food.

After the dinner, we went to a club that was owned by the same guy who owned the restaurant. I didn’t want to pay the entrance fee of €20 since it was for the open bar and I wasn’t going to be drinking anything. There was a little confusion, but it all got sorted out, and I got in for free.

The night was pretty fun. I met quite a few people, and even had a couple decent conversations even though it was hard to hear. Unfortunately my roomie ended up getting pretty sick, so she had to go home. I went home shortly after in a cab with two guys from Vancouver and one Australian. We ended up paying way too much for our cab (due to a little confusion and the cabbie not having change), but we got back to the hotel without any problems, so oh well. I tried to make sure Bianca was okay, and I went to bed once she was asleep.

Next - Florence!

*The title of this post comes from something our local guide said throughout the whole day.

A bad start to my Christmas

**Continued from the beginning of December 18th.**

I left the house and hauled my suitcase running all the way to the bus stop to catch the bus. The bus was going pretty slowly, so I was worried I might not make it to the train station on time. Once I got to town, I went as fast as I could all the way from the bus stop to the train station. I got there a few minutes before the train was supposed to leave, but the train was running late because of bad weather (it had been snowing the night before, so I had some time to wait. The train took a lot longer than normal. Then I had to get off in Manchester and switch trains to get one that would take me to the airport. It was running really late too, so I had to wait around again.

I finally got to the airport terminal and had to spend some time figuring out how to get to my hotel. I could see it, but I couldn’t figure out how to get there without just making a mad dash across the middle of the street while dragging my suitcase behind me, so that’s what I did.

There was a bug line to check in at the hotel, but I checked in and went to relax in my room. I was looking forward to a nice, long sleep in a big comfy bed. 

A nice big bed!

I decided to use the Internet to check the status of my flight to London for the next morning and I found out that it had been cancelled! All the flights going to London had been cancelled!

I freaked out a bit and phoned my parents, trying to figure out what to do. I tried seeing if I could find someone to ask, but by that time the lobby was filled with people looking for rooms, and the only person I could get a hold of on the phone was only able to tell me that my flight definitely cancelled. Eventually I decided that I should catch a train to London and try to make my flight for the next morning.

I went and bought a train ticket, then packed up my stuff, and lugged it all the way back to the station. I was about 10 minutes early, and trying to figure out which platform I was supposed to be on, when a conductor who was hopping to go yelled at me that I should hurry up and get on the train because it was leaving, so I did. I was a bit worried that I was on the wrong train, but then I realized that it didn’t matter since they would all go to Manchester Piccadilly anyway.

I got off at Manchester Piccadilly to find out that the train to London Euston had been cancelled. I got in a line hoping I could get a refund or something, but got distracted by hunger, and went to find food. While I was eating I saw a couple guys get into a bit of a fight, so that was my classy dinner entertainment.

At that point, I wanted to just take the train back to my hotel, sleep for the night and deal with everything later, but then I heard them say that there would be a train leaving for Euston at 8:30, so I decided to catch it. I waited on the platform, and it was a long and cold wait. Then they said that the train would be 20 minutes delayed. A train finally came to the platform, but then they said that we couldn’t get on it. 10 minutes later, they relented and let us on.

After sitting in the train for a bit, they came on with an announcement saying that it would be at least another 45 minutes before they could leave. At that point I was so exhausted from lack of sleep that I basically just passed out.

The train finally started moving at about 10:10, and I spent the ride trying to sleep, and partially listening to the conversations going on around me. Of course we ended up arriving in London incredibly late (around 12:30), so the tube had already stopped running, and of course there was no one around to help everyone figure out how they were actually supposed to get to wherever they were going with their train tickets.

Arriving at London Euston.

I decided that I needed to try and find a way to get to the airport, so I tried to figure out the bus schedule, and then I went looking for the bus stop so I could catch a bus. I caught a bus and headed off to Paddington Station.

Once I found my way in, I just sat down on a bench and started crying. I was exhausted, upset, cold, trying to find my way around a huge city I had never been to in the middle of the night, and alone. I was sure that my Christmas was about to go horribly because it was off to such a bad start. I needed to find a way to pass some time, so I started writing in my journal, and I wrote until my fingers were cold, then put on my gloves and wrote some more.

Cold, dark Paddington Station.

There were some workers there, but not many other people.

Eventually I had to get up and start walking because I was far too cold. By that time, it was a little past 2 in the morning. I got to the other side of the station, and an elderly man came up to me asking if I was on my way to Heathrow. When I told him yes, he asked if I’d like to share a cab with a nearby couple. It definitely seemed a little sketchy, but I was too cold and tired to care anymore. I just wanted to be somewhere warm, so I said I’d share the cab to Heathrow with them.

He took us out to his car, and I was surprised to see that it was just a regular car with a “cab” sticker in the window. It seemed sketchy, but I figured that I would probably be safe with the random couple. It turned out that they were from Romania and had been visiting Cardiff. It turned out the driver had moved to London from Morocco 40 years ago, so he spoke French.

We got to Heathrow Terminal 1 safe and sound, and as soon as we walked in, all you could see everywhere were people lying on the floor with tin foil blankets. So many flights from the day before had been cancelled due to snow that the airport was filled with people sleeping on their luggage. Someone had even set up a tent. I made my way to terminal 3 to find the Air Canada counter.

Tent in the middle of the airport.

Water bottles and tin foil blankets were about all the help anyone got.

I found the Air Canada counter, and a space on the floor nearby so I could sit down and write in my journal. By that time it was about 3 in the morning (on Sunday), and I had only slept about 6 hours total since Friday night.  I wrote for a while, but I was sitting rather close to a door, and rather quickly, it became too cold for me to stand.

I headed back towards the Air Canada desk and ticket counter, and that was when I found the People’s Republic of Canuckistan. The people in front of the ticket counter had draped their tin foil blankets over the queue posts, making a fort, and had erected a sign that said “The People’s Republic of Canuckistan” on a piece of newspaper. It made me proud to be Canadian.

The fort in all its glory.

Close-up of the sign.

Next - The adventure continues at Heathrow.

Heading back to Oslo

**2nd half is heavy on the writing, sorry I have no photos for it.**


I got on my 8:30 train, and got a seat no problem. The train took us to Karlstad, where we had to get off and switch to buses due to construction of some sort.

I got on the bus that was headed to Charlottenberg, and it took about another hour to get there. When I got there, I walked around a bit, down what I think was the main street, and over by the library. I found an absolutely MASSIVE candy store on the main street. Half of the store was essentially bulk bins with candy, while the other half was mostly pop, but a bunch more candy as well. It made my teeth hurt just being there.

Massive candy store.

Random statue.

I was really tired, and carrying around my big backpack was hard, so I decided that I had explored as much as I wanted to (it was a small place, and the only reason I wanted to go there was because it had my name), so I just headed back to the train station. There was a pancake house right beside the station, so I went in there and had a "banana surprise" pancake which was essentially a crepe filled with whipped cream, some chunks of banana, and chocolate sprinkles(!), and drizzled with chocolate syrup.

I stayed in the restaurant for quite a while, relaxing and looking at the couple big (and a little outdated) maps they had on the wall. Then I basically just waited in and around the train station until the train came.

I got back to Oslo, and back to the apartment without any problems, and had a relaxing evening, mostly just surfing the web. When L got back home, I told her about what my plans were for the next day, and we worked out that it would be best if she drove me to the train station and I could take the express train to the airport from there. I stayed up late just for the sake of it, and made sure everything was ready to travel.

I got up early the next morning with everything packed and ready to go and had my last breakfast with L. She was kind enough to cook me some eggs and a sausage, and it was delicious! We headed out a few minutes later than planned, but I got my ticket and hopped on the train without any troubles.

I got to the airport, and headed into line to get my boarding pass. I got all the way through the long line and then the woman at the ticket counter looked at my paper and said, "You're at the wrong airport. That one is about 2 hours away from here." Since there was less than 1.5 hours until my flight left, I knew I couldn't do it, so I headed over to the ticket line to buy a ticket to Manchester.

The next available option they had was a business class ticket and I would have gotten into Manchester at 10 pm which was long after the shuttle to the university stopped running, and since it was so expensive, it wasn't really an option. I got a ticket that would leave at 11 am the next day, and the only good part was that it was a direct flight (my original one transferred in Copenhagen). I phoned L to let her know what happened, and she said she could pick me up at the train station, so I got another ticket for the express train and hopped on.

Because of some kind of construction that was happening, the train was about 15 minutes late getting to the station. L found me, and we decided to leave my bags there in a luggage locker overnight because I was probably going to have to get myself to the train station the next day.

We hurried back to her car because she didn't have much time left, and when we got there, there was a man who was writing her a ticket, even though she was only about a minute late. He had only started writing it, but he said that he couldn't undo it, and she got a huge fine even though she was standing right there! It was equivalent to about $120 CAD, and I felt really bad that it had happened because of me, so I told her that I would pay for it.

We got home, and I sent some emails to let my university know that I would be coming late, and then I went and had a four hour nap because I had gotten so little sleep the night before. After I woke up, L came home and helped me with some food for dinner, and then went out again.

I wanted to find some way to get the money to pay her fine, but there were no bank machines nearby, so I started freaking out a bit and decided I needed to phone home. Unfortunately I didn't have a phone, so I just went on Facebook and waited until I could get a hold of one of Keith's friends to text him to go on Skype. Then I decided that texting probably wasn't fast enough, so I made the guy phone my house and tell my parents to go on Skype. Haha, I owe him. I think he took pity on me when I said "I'm accidentally in Norway." Lucky thing my brother has nice friends.

After a fairly long chat with my family (the first time I had talked to them!), I went almost straight to bed, so I could get up really early the next morning.

Next - leaving Oslo.

The updates begin

So, I have tons to say, but I'm going to post them in a few different updates just to spread things around a bit. Starting from where I left off at the Calgary airport...

After I got off my laptop, I decided I had to get a last Canadian meal, so I went to Tim Hortons (making it really more of a snack).  I got a maple pecan Danish just because I thought that sounded extra Canadian. Then I also treated myself to a magazine and an ultra travel pillow (it has an extra bit to blow up) because I figured it might be nice to have one for while I’m trying to sleep on trains and such.

My first overseas flight was pretty boring, which I guess is good. I slept a lot, got bored, ate some of the mediocre food they gave us (although the tiny piece of chocolate cake was quite good), and enjoyed the complimentary pillow and blanket. I was better taken care of that I had expected to be. The people sitting beside me (I was at the edge of the middle row) didn’t seem to speak English very well because they never wanted to put their bags under the seat even when the flight attendant came around to ask them to do so. The plane wasn’t as big as I was hoping it might be, I think it was just an Airbus 330.

The worst part about the flight was when I had switched over to the map on my TV screen for the last part of the flight. Our plane got within 11 miles of London, then started doing circles. It went back up to 23, back down to 11 a couple times. I just wanted to land!

This wasn't supposed to be the world's most accurate depiction of  the travel map I was looking at, but it actually turned out looking a lot like it. Circle, circle, circle, then zip out east and sharp turn back. The part that is most wrong is the colours. The original map was green and the plane was white.

Luckily I was already at the right terminal when I got to Heathrow. Good thing because that place is insanely huge, and I had to go through security again! Once I got through security, I was in the giant area that basically resembled a high-end mall. There was even a store selling electronics, although it’s beyond me why anyone would want to buy a 20 inch Mac at the airport. There were also stores like Chanel and Prada and Paul Smith.

My flight was a little delayed leaving London, but it got to Oslo straight away, and I had no problem going through customs. All they did was stamp my passport, and ask me a couple quick questions, but to get into the UK, you have to fill out a form! At least I know now so I can find the address of where I will be staying before I get on the plane.

Next up - OSLO!!!!

On my way!

So I boarded my flight and left town at 2:35 pm after shuffling things around in my bags a little (too big and heavy for them to let me take on!). Now it's a little after 5 (local time) and I'm writing this from Calgary. Not much interesting has happened, the flight went well, and the only funny thing was that a bunch of passengers had to shuffle to the back because the front of the plane was full and the back was empty. I was happy though because there was no one sitting beside me, so I got to have a window seat!!

Unfortunately I had sky-checked my big backpack (with my big camera), and then I found out that my little camera's batteries had died. I still got a couple quick shots as we were taking off, and now I've found an outlet in a corner, and I'm totally pirating the Calgary airport's electricity. The sketchiest part about it is that I had to plug my charger into my international converter just to be able to get it to fit (there's sort of a cover around the outlet). To get the free wi-fi here, I had to sign in through Facebook. It seemed a tad dodgy, but whatevs.

I'll be here for a bit (I'm thinking they'll start boarding in a little over an hour), and then I'll be on my 8 hour flight to London. I've never been on a flight this long, so I'm expecting this plane to be way bigger than any other one I've ever seen. It'll definitely be a little different from the good ol' Dash 8-100's that I am so used to taking (no more moving passengers around to distribute the weight properly!).

Picture time!!