I came home from Italy on Tuesday, and I really should have blogged about the whole 20-day trip then, but I didn't, so here I am, posting two days later. Yeah.
Anyway, I'll try and bounce over stuff in good enough detail to satisfy people and in little enough detail so I can actually start all the AP reading I have procrastinated on in a reasonable amount of time. I may have to break it up into multiple posts so the readers are satisfied and I still get homework done. Yeah.
Storytelling, commence!
So we left for the airport on Thursday, June 22nd at around 2:30. It took about 2 hours to get through check-in, security, and other international shenanigans before getting to the gate, where we had around half an hour before boarding started. It was long, so I was glad I was wearing my hiking boots since we were standing up so much (I was initially wearing them because I hadn't put my clothing into Ziploc bags and pressed all the air out (it's a space-saving trick that also keeps clothes dry that I learned from backpacking), so I had no room for my boots, which were the bulkiest things I brought). Anyway, then we actually boarded the plane, which was one of those International planes with ten seats in a row and two aisles. We departed at 6 PM; we landed in Geneva on Friday morning around 8 AM, Switzerland time. At home, it was 2 AM, and we had had around an hour of not-exactly-sleep on the plane (where you are not dreaming, but you still wake up), so we were all completely jet lagged, utterly exhausted, and running on adrenaline.
After we landed and got through customs, we took a train to Bern and checked into the only hostel in town.
Also, I nearly left my bag at the airport, but I didn't because Mom kept annoyingly not-reminding me by saying, "Are you SURE you have everything? Are you SURE you're sure?".
After the hostel, we went around Bern and went to the market, where I discovered my new favorite fruit-berry thing: a sort of mini pomegranate (it is about the size of a grape, is really veiny like a pomegranate, has the seediness of pomegranate, and kind of tastes like a pomegranate and a blackberry mixed together). I have no idea how to spell it (it had a long, cool-sounding German name), but it was really good, and we definitely don't have anything like it in the US.
Market food was what we had for lunch before going off to be dorky tourists for a while. I don't remember what we saw, but it was cool. Then we went to the hostel and ate dinner and slept really well.
And I'm going to leave it at that for now because I have a lot of AP reading to deal with and complete and stuff. Also, calculus packets. This is what you get for procrastinating on supper AP work...
