Touchdown!

Hello one and all!

That's a pretty cliche, boring intro but hey. Whatever. So this will be my travel blog for the duration of my stay in Italy and a few other parts of Europe. A few housekeeping details; I plan to update this every 2-3 days (where convenient), will be sharing it to Facebook each week, and plan to upload just a handful of photos to each one. I'll obviously have a lot more to say and a few more photos to share than what I post here, so if I happen to mention a topic or place that I have a few funny stories about that I haven't shared on the blog, I'll underline it. For example: '... we visited a restaurant for dinner after getting back from the beach'- in which case there would be a few funny stories from the beach that I haven't shared in the blog. If you're interested write it down or Facebook message me and I'll update you on the shenanigans. Same for the photos, except where I'd highlight the topic in bold, for example: 'I took a train down to a vineyard today where we got to...'. Hopefully that all makes sense. Anyway, that's all the boring stuff out of the way. Here's my last 2 days in a nutshell! 

     Having said goodbye to the family and successfully clearing customs, much to my surprise seeing as I obviously had a knife strapped to my wrist, I pretty much made my way straight to the plane. I sat down outside a cafe which faced my departure gate and waited for them to open the gate. I have no idea how I managed it but I actually nearly missed my plane, despite being a good hour and a half early. I must have zoned out hardcore whilst sitting there or something, because by the time I had zoned back in nearly everyone had boarded the plane and the staff were preparing to close the gates! I scored well with plane seats though. The guy next to me lived right nearby my house in Warrandyte, was in to games and had an original Gameboy with his own copy of Pokemon: Fire Red on him, which is pretty much the coolest thing anyone can have on them. His name was also Josh, which was kind of weird. The flight up was pretty much gross. 14 hours stuck on a seat which had no leg room was kind of not awesome. My saving grace arrived when we landed! 

     Queue: Abu Dhabi. Not that I really got to see any of it... this was so weird. Everyone speaking Arabic. I literally had no idea what was going on. I pretty much made my way to my flight by trying to walk down each walkway with my ticket in hand. Eventually someone would tell me I was going the wrong way (at least I think that's what they said), and showed me the right way to go. I was literally bouncing between random walkways and cafes with people correcting me and showing me where to go next! I got stopped at customs because they thought that my little plastic Flight Centre folder was concealing a weapon, because I can totally stab people to death with my well folded paper. Nothing too special can be said for the flight from Abu Dhabi to Milan, except for the brief time we spent flying over Iran and Baghdad, The on board flights were kind of interesting though. There's a photo attached of the description for one of the in flight movies, produced by an Arabic company. Can't say I watched it. Milan was totally covered in thick clouds, so I couldn't see anything coming in for landing. Unless like 14 million friggin tonnes of clouds count as something exciting. The family I am now staying with picked me up from the airport and drove me to their house. We ate some seriously good pasta for lunch, followed up by even better pizzas for dinner. The pizzas were like a whole family effort- Lisa (the youngest sister) made the pizza bases, Achille and Christina (parents) made the tomato bases and Pietro and David (brothers) fetched the cheese and mushrooms. These were like seriously good pizzas. 

    I went with Christina and Lisa to a Catholic church this morning, which was run by their uncle. It was kind of interesting listening to the whole service in a different language! I reckon I understood like, 5% of it, tops. I kept up with most of the traditional bits and some of the songs though, because they were similar to the ones we use in a course I've been a part of back home in Melbourne. The last prayer totally got me though- it was like a full 5-6 minute prayer that the entire congregation had memorised. There were no notes to follow either. I didn't want to look like I was defiantly refusing to get involved or something so I started quoting the navigator I use in my car (which is set to Italian). Retrospect: stupid idea. My brain failed to recall the fact that we were no longer in Melbourne, and that people here actually understand Italian. I stood there for a good minute or so telling everyone to take the second exit at the roundabout and to turn left in 300 metres. Turns out the looks I was getting from the guy in front of me weren't because he was super impressed by my Italian praying skills. I'm not totally convinced he heard the whole minute of it, because I wasn't exactly shouting it out at the top of my lungs. I'm certain he must of heard some of it though. I've probably just totally turned his life upside down with my hyper enlightened prayer about left turns and roundabouts. He should probably be thanking me. Home now and making plans for the rest of the day/week. Just discovered the family has a pet turtle. Score. Never met a turtle with an Italian accent...

One of our in-flight entertainment options.
Because who doesn't want to see a movie
about a human flesh eater from the
Yaksa Clan.

Can't see too much of it, but that cloudline below us is literally

 something like 700-800 metres thick. 

Took us a good 10 minutes to descend through. 

The nativity scene, with an african theme. Jesus is a glowing ball and a giraffe is playing the drum! These were all done by the children who attended the church.