Missing trains has become our forte. The ridiculously overpriced Eurostar Italia landed us in Rome from Venice in 3 hours (expensive ticket wasn't an issue for us, due to reasons which can't be mentioned here). So very well: it is 11pm, you run 300 meters to the Metro, you certainly do not speak Italian except for Mi Scusi and Bwon-jorno (thanks to Eurotrip, the movie), you haggle with the ticket vending machine to get a Metro ticket, and your ass finally gets lucky to have barely whisked inside the last metro. The use of 'lucky' is rather significant - ask those
who have experienced the Rome Metro(see the picture to the right). The way its doors close is horrifying enough to leave half the commuters deaf, and a quarter others with permanent subway-phobia. But we ain't no half fried stuff, we are hard boiled enough to handle such insignificant distractions... (are we??)But what we weren't able to handle was to miss The last connecting Suburban train and The last bus which could-have-had-taken us to the hostel, and also the last person at the ticket counter who could-have-had-suggested some way out... Ha, we bloody optimists :P Nevertheless, we walked randomly for a kilometre or two, tried not to talk to many people (some 'experts' had suggested that Rome is rather unsafe in the night, and going by the number of visible drunkards, this was seeming to be an understatement) and kept looking for a decent place to spend the night. Finally, with nothing substantially decent in sight, we decided to spend the night in a park. SO, by jugaadu efforts, we found this children's slide (see the picture) and did some random engineering in order to get a makeshift bed and got down to sleep at around 1am.
Murphy's law is more fundamental than all of Newton's laws combined together. At around 5:30am, the water-jets placed for irrigating the park started off automatically - We thought it is raining and hence rushed to find some overhead shelter, only to discover that water was not coming from the top, but from all around us. Somehow we left that area, half asleep, half drenched but fully spirited with a shameless grin, and luckily the metro had started by that time. We reached the hostel, checked in, kept our luggage and with a few residual goosebumps emanating from the last night's excitement, set out to explore the imperial city...
7 comments:
ha ! reminds me of my experience in nottingham. our bus was at 5 in the morning. too stingy to get a room we decided to spend the night at night clubs. but even they closed at 2. we then had to endure freezing cold curled amongst ourselves in the bus station. thankfully at 3, a godsent bus driver allowed us to board his bus (with the same ticket) which took a long route but at least we didnt freeze to death !
haha! true, nightclubs are useless for spending nights... and is it always so cold in England?? I mean, you went in the summers, even then??
yes.. at night its always very cold .. 5-10 degrees
nightclubs are truly useless for spending nights :) ...
I am not much a blogger ... still i wanna suggest - add some more pics and travel tips ;) for peers like me
hehe... sure sure! Pics next time se aur zyada kar doonga, aur tips bhi. waise pics ka poora collection Picasa pe hai, like you.
And frankly speaking, main bhi nightclubs mein zyada nahi gaya, i dont really like it. most of the time, it was only because somebody else had insisted. otherwise it seems very boring and repetitive.
drove from rome to venice - wasnt a great experience. too tiring and the route wasnt scenic so you were better off in that bullet train.
and rome although had some pretty interesting stuff was full of pick pockets, con artists and rude people - wont ever go back there. Too touristy for me.
Venice - may be !!
@Discovering M:
yes, you are right. Rome is a bit too touristy and always full of shady elements. But very beautiful indeed. Still, I would like to explore it more sometime... one can take precautions :)
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