Sunday, February 17, 2008

THE BEST DAY EVER (depends how you see the world. is the glass half full or half empty..you tell me)

I am not sure how I get so unlucky and then get re-paid with more luck than I actually deserve, but damn I am a lucky girl. I woke up from another delightful nights slumber with my minki pinki next to me. We picked up falafuls to go and headed to the port to sit in the sun and to eat our lunch. The port of Barcelona overlooks the ocean and rows and rows of large fishing boats. Hundreds of fat unwanted fish gather at the edge of the port and people gather around (especially on sundays) to sit by the water, to feed some fish, and those romantics snuggle in each others arms. The five us, just plopped in the sun, and went to town on our delicious falafuls. Before we knew it, it was already 3:30 and we realized we better head back to the residenica to pack up and give our goodbyes to our favorite little barcelonean creatures. Three hugs, three kisses and three goodbyes, the Gorilla and I walked down the illuminated hallway to catch a cab to the bus station. We successfully made it on the bus to the airport and we successfully made it to the airport. However, "apparently" if you are American, you can't check in online (which we did we just didn't print our boarding passes, because on the way there, we checked in online, printed out our boarding passes and were the first on the plane) but "apparently" doesn't won't fly leaving Barcelona. We arrived an hour before the flight and thinking that since we checked in online we could just get to the ticket counter and pick up our tickets. Easy as pie. Well, yeah no. We were told that we would have to pay 4 euro to get a new ticket because Americans weren't allowed to check in online. I still don't understand. We were directed to stand in another line to retrieve these tickets and 10 minutes before our flight was about the leave we were still standing in the same line about to sweat our hands off. Then "last call" was announced and the Gorilla and I attempted to negotiate with people in front of us and explain to them that our flight was about to take off and that we needed to cut. We finally get our tickets and RAN. At this point we still hadn't gone through security. The Gorilla goes through the detector and beep beep beep. We did not have any time for a game of beep beep. Thankfully, the officer realized that the Gorilla had some type of metal on her boots. I am still not sure how she did it but I turned around and all of the sudden I see the Gorilla leaping through the metal detector barefoot. We scrambled for our stuff and darted faster than the speed of light. Keep in mind the Gorilla is still barefoot. We literally fly on to the run way and sit in the first seats available. We made it! Whoo hoo. If the jews thought miracles happened because of some oil, then they should truly evaluate the miracles that happened in the rest of our adventure home. Due to our unfortunate discovery that the Bolgona airport that Ryanair claims to be situated in, is actually false, we realized that we were probably going to have to spend the night in the Bologna train station. Prior to our trip we calculated that we could take the last train out of Bologna in plenty of time, but due to the little mishap, we were told by multiple people that there was just no way were going to make the 10:20 train leaving from Bologna to Florence, when our flight was to arrive at 9:10 in Forli because we would still have to take a 15 minute cab to the train station. And the train from Forli to Bologna is 45 minutes and the last train out of Forli to Bologna would arrive at 10:22. Impossible they told us. We would literally miss the train by TWO minutes. Remember what I said, two minutes actually mean something. This whole missing of the train wouldn't have been that big of an issue if A. my bestest friend in the entire world, whom might I add, I haven't seen in 5 and a half months wasn't coming to visit me and stay with me. B.DID YOU HEAR ME...Miss Monica Beth Pack was coming to Florence and if our planned worked, she was going to meet us in Bologna to take the train to Florence with us (a minor detail I forgot to tell you. Monica spent the past couple of days in Venice and her connecting train to Florence was in Bologna, the same train that we were supposed to get on) C. The train station in Bolgona is sketchy D. I had a paper due tomorrow at 9:30 a.m. F. We were exhausted from a fabulous weekend. Just to name of few of the problems with missing the train. Back to the story. The Gorilla and I boult off the plane, hop in a cab and jump on to the 9:31 train to Bologna. At 10:00, we ask the guy in front of us how much longer to Bologna and he said 20 minutes. All hopes of actually making the train were shot. I called Monica and she was waiting at the train station. I told her to fake an asthma attack, or better, offer the conductor a peep show, anything to delay it for TWO minutes. At 10:15, I called Monica again to ask the bin number for the train and at 10:18 the our train stopped in Bologna. Our train got in four minutes ahead of schedule but we had TWO minutes to get from bin number 9 to bin number 3......At 10:20, we ran up the stairs thinking we had already missed the last train BUT............standing at the top was a. Monica b. No Train. The train was 20 minutes delayed. I almost cried and died. The thought of staying up all night almost made me vomit but there was no ralphing tonight, just pure happiness. I finished my paper and Monica and I spooned in my frozen little twin bed. I am still in shock that we made it. I had the best weekend ever, followed by the best reunion with my best friend. Truly the best day ever.

post from the tenth of february in the year of oooo eight.

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