Last week Monica and I went off for a short break to Rome. We stayed about a week, landing Tuesday and flying home again on Saturday. I wasn’t expecting much before we flew out there — I’m not really a great fan of travelling and visiting places — but I suppose I would be doing somewhat of an injustice to say that it was as bad as I expected.
Getting from Fiumicino airport south-west of Rome was surprisingly painless (if a little expensive) thanks to the direct train, the Leonardo Express, which takes you right into the city’s main terminus, Roma Termini. We opted to use the automatic ticket machines at the airport which quite happily gave us the option to complete the transaction in English (We did however end up paying for the tickets on a debit card because the machine refused to take our notes, despite promising it would.) From there it was a short hop on the city’s B Metro line to Colloseo and a short walk to the self-catering apartment which we had rented.
We chose to buy the Roma Pass for the week. [read more]
It’s kind of a tradition to write blog entries while I’m on the train it seems only now it’s gone a little more high-tech. Rather than writing offline on a rickety old laptop I’m writing online thanks to my Three dongle on my new Samsung nettop (courtesy of The Sun and Prince William).
Today my journey is to Chester to meet up with a group of friends to celebrate Scott’s impending marriage. The weekend will be spent in rural North Wales, the rest of the journey from Chester to the bunkhouse in which we’re staying will in Ben’s dad’s car.
I was thinking I might try to get this blog up-to-date while I was on the train, but it’s been so long since I last wrote I can’t think how I should start. In all honesty, from day to day, not an awful lot has changed. work is still the same, and I’m still living with Dana in our little flat. The biggest difference, I suppose, is there might be some romance on the horizon. [read more]
It’s about time I wrote this, given it was last year and all.
So I’d arrived in Lancaster. The railway station is in the city centre and the university, and so my guest room, is a mile or so south of the city. In the day there are plenty of busses running between town and campus (In fact there are at night now, too. There is a night bus service which runs hourly through the night between the city and campus. This wasn’t there while I was a student which is a shame – there would have been a few times I would have liked to use it!), and normally I would catch one of these, but I had both my camera bag and my large clothes bag with me so I opted to find myself a taxi.
It’s been an interesting week. Good by most counts, despite the odd complication. Up and down would be the best description, I think. I’ll deal with it in a few posts to stop them being too long…
Alright, here goes (a lot later than planned, but lets skip over that shall we 😉 ) – the rest of the holiday in a nutshell!
The thing is, I guess the reason why I haven’t written this much over the holidays is because I haven’t been doing that much…so I’ve not felt the need to get on here and write about it. Anyway, the holidays kicked off (well, kind of, it was a little while into it, but it was meant to kick it off…just I finished earlier than a lot of my friends because they are in the year below me) with a party at Ross’s house. Actually, Natalie and I had been invited out to a kind of gathering (does that kind of make it sound like a weird ritual, or is it just me…) at Kathy’s house a few days before, but didn’t go. Natalie went off on a nice cruse with her parents a little while earlier that week, so I would have had to go on my own and things and I didn’t fancy that (not to mention that I didn’t know where she lives and we were only invited like the day before not giving much time). So, Ross’s party was the first real party this summer (actually, the only one thinking about it!). I met Ben a little early as he wanted to get some shopping in Halifax before we went, so we did that, and then had some time to kill. We ended up sitting in the Piece Hall for about 45 mins in the end, just talking (and being hounded by wasps…I think I must look like a flower or something, because I always get attacked by things like that…maybe its the colours I wear :-\ ). That was quite fun, we talked about lots of things. Then we got thrown out because they were closing. So we made our way to the bus station where we were supposed to be meeting everyone. Sure enough people rolled up and we all gathered. When Ross finally arrived there was a great deal of buying of alcohol to be done. It’s strange, I don’t drink, and yet I am always the one given money to buy things like that, and always the one who end up carrying the stuff! I don’t mind, just strange (heh, I suppose I should be honoured people think I look all grown up, hehe). After a rather long visit to the shop (with much lengthy deciding what to buy, and then trying to explain to me so I got it right), we made our way back to the bus station to…well…get a bus. The rest of the night wasn’t much to talk about – usual party stuff – people getting drunk, chatting, messing about, greasy food, computer games (no karaoke this time around), strip poker, loud poor music, and me with my camera to record it all. I love it…other people don’t at the time…but they do the next day 😀 We stayed over that night watching the TV (there are some amusing programs on at night), and I left at about 8.30am while other people were still half asleep and went home. Then I slept. That was a good night. I enjoyed it. [read more]
Well there goes another entry (heh, it seems to be calming to write this from college after exams, lol). I should be in general studies now, but I’m not going to go – my excuse is that I’m stressed about the exam I just had (or something…). That’s one thing that is odd – we don’t have exams leave as such. They decided that they would carry on running lessons up to the exams, but we get the day before any exam off so we could revise. I think generally people are taking that as being ‘it doesn’t matter if you don’t go to lessons, no one will complain’.
Anyway, enough with talk of exams (that was the last entry!). Its spring bank holiday next week, hurrah. It will give me chance to have at least some kind of rest, even if I have promised to go into Age Concern at some point over the holidays (rather was nagged into it by my mother, lol). [read more]