After the past weeks, I’m glad to say taking public transportation has been getting easier and better. I do not mind taking a bus or a train by myself anymore even if it’s during the evening. In fact, after school I love to go explore around the city!
One of the highlights so far has been meeting my aunt for the first time ever. She has lived in Rome for around 10 years and we had been emailing over the summer. We finally met up in Piazza del Popolo to get lunch and meet each other. She is on her 60s and she reminds me a lot of my grandmother, whom I am very close with, so I love the feeling of having her close. Since then, we decided we were going to see each other at least once a month.
My relationship with my roommates keeps getting better. Three of them and I decided to go to Elba Island for a weekend. We booked train, ferry tickets and the hotel in advance. We mostly wanted to go to rent a boat and go cliff jumping. However, we came across many surprises.
We got to the train station at 5 in the morning and there was no one to help us out to print our train tickets and we had to buy them ALL of them again if not we would miss the train. We got to Elba Island and with no cellphone service or data, we got out of the ferry and were completely lost. When we finally found the hotel, we had to wait for 4 hours to be able to check in. When we finally did, we decided just to relax by the beach and leave the planned activities for Sunday. The place was absolutely beautiful and we had a nice dinner right next to the marina.
We woke up Sunday morning with the noise of the rain… After having checked the weather every day of the week. It was heavily raining and none of us had umbrellas or raincoats. The owner of the hotel gave us plastic bags to cover ourselves and we had to go back right after breakfast to catch another train. The one we were supposed to take back got cancelled and the other one was until the next day. We sat at the train station completely wet, waited for the train for 4 hours. It felt so good to be back home at Roma!
I can definitely say my first experience traveling was quite memorable and I’ll be telling these adventures until I’m a grandma!!