a badly punctuated stream of consciousness

a little more colourful than the others

'allo 'allo 'allo! what 'ave we 'ere? and 'ow arr ye this mornin'?
.....well it's probably pretty obvious that i am a moron, as am trying to emphasise the fact that am in england by dropping my 'aiches everywhere, altho the last one seems to be a little more pirate-ey......
so anyway, am having fun experimenting with all these different colours cos never noticed before that i coudl change the font and stuff. hehe, i'm soooo quick! altho, in my defense i feel i shoudl mention that most of my other blogs have been written in incredible haste, as internet time was always rather short and never felt like had enough. is a different story now tho, so have decided to make this the msot colourful blog ever! so here it goes ...

teary farewells well as i have already mentioned, i am no longer in italy. but i will quickly fill you in on what happened when i left that beautiful country, before i move onto the other stuff i've been doing. so the last time i wrote it was wednesday the 8th june, the last day of school and my 3rd last day in the country. two words can pretty easily sum up my last days in italy: packing and goodbyes. i had a lot of trouble with the former. it was probably easier than packing to leave australia, because there wasnt really any umming and aahing over what to take. the problem was how on earth was i going to get all my stuff back home again!? i dont think the airline people really understand just how little 20kgs actually is. i mean sure, if you are giong for a 3 week holiday, or backpacking or something, it's probably fine. but, as my cousin Phil said just last week, if you are moving house over seas 20kgs is just not enough. ridiculous more like, and just plain IMPOSSIBLE! i reckon the airlines shoudl have some kind of extra allowance for people who have to do this, as 20kgs didnt even cover my clothes! and shoes and books and birthday presents are just SO heavy! anyway, so eventually worked it all out and organised all the stuff i have to send home. as for the goodbyes, well they were hard too. very hard infact. i wont go too far into it, mainly becuase it woudl mean i woudl have to explain all the people i said goodbye to in those few days, and what they all meant to me. i think it's enough to say they all meant a lot to me and i will miss them a lot. i was proud of myself tho, cos i didnt cry until when i was actually leaving Carpi. it was as we were leaving for the airport, and saying goodbye to my host parents and grandparents and stuff. and of course once i'd started crying it was very difficult to stop and at several intervals during the car trip to the airport my eyes welled up all over again, and again, and again. the actual flight to paris went quite well, altho i had only just managed to fall asleep when we landed again, which woke me up with a start. then we took a bus from the airport through peak hour friday afternoon traffic, then a few metro trains to Gare du Nord station and then it was only a couple of blocks to our hotel. i wont go into the difficulties we had wiht all our luggage, especially mine, on the metro that night, but i will just say that in a way i was glad i didnt have to do the return trip with them on the monday. damn i hate luggage.

paris and la tour eiffel soo, Paris! well, apart from the difficulties and delays arriving, i found it a pretty up and down trip. we arrived on the friday night and i was already rather exhausted because the previous few nights i hadnt slept well and all in all it was just a big, emotional, tiring week for me, but i certainly didnt get to bed early that night either. like i said, we arrived at the hotel rather late, and then of course had to get settled in and freshened up, so by the time we ventured out to have tea it was about 10.30pm i think. oh, by the way, 'we' were Erica and elisa, my two host sisters, Ele - a friend of elisa's, Sole (soh-leh, not 'soul') and Robbi - freinds of erica's, and me. anyway, then after a little arguing between elisa and everybody else about where and what we were going to eat, we finally settled on a little cafe which had incredibly expensive and rather tiny pizza's, altho i opted for a ham and cheese toasted sanga instead. then, when i was thinking, great it is 11.30, we will finally get to sleep, we instead grabbed the metro to go see the eiffel tower. i was not very interested as was literally about to drop, and by the time we got there we only really saw it from a distance anyway since we had to turn around and go straight back before the metro closed for the night. we nearly didnt make it either, because soem stations close earlier than others, but in the end we caught the very last one back to paris nord and then went to bed. the next day we got up, breakfasted (yummy croisants!) and at the moment i have forgotten exactly what we did. but we went to some places.... i think we did the champs elisees (cannot spell that) first, and then wandered down the very long avenue to the louvre (spelling?) and all the while taking lots of photos and stuff. we saw lots of things that day anyway, and it was all a lot better once we ditched elisa and ele and went off by ourselves to do the real sightseeing, cos as much as i like my host sister, she is SO fussy, was in a rather bad mood, and was mainly only interested in shopping. i think then we went to notre dame too, and did a little shopping ourselves too. anyway, that was another big day and it certainly wasnt over yet, cos then we went back to the hotel to get ready for dinner. food proved to be a very very big problem that night, more than at every other meal, since elisa, who as i have already mentioned is fussy, prefers only to eat italian food. so she had found this italian restaurant, but it was about twice the price of food in italy, and the rest of us were rather unwilling to eat there because of a)the price, and b) why go to a foreign country to eat food you can get in your own...right? anyway so another fight ensued but after dinner (at the exxy italian restaurant) we went back to the eiffel tower and got a better look and some more photos. we were going to climb it that night but it was a little late so we decided to go back and do it early sunday morn. and that is what we did. elisa and ele didnt want to so they slept in, but me and the other three went out and spent a lovely morning climbing steps up one of the seven man made wonders of the world. it was cooool man! literally, cos there was a strong breeze. but also it was an amazing view (mostly grey..... paris is a grey, dirty city in my opinion) and the trip to the very top floor in the glass elevator was fun and a little scary. anwyay, then we had lunch and ooh, it was sunday we went to notredame, and had a yummy lunch in a cafe near it. and after that we did a river cruise for a few hours which was nice and relaxing. and funny cos we found a whole bunch of other italian tourists, and the first things they woudl ask us was 'have you been able to get your mobile to work?' it seems everyone was having similar problems with thier mobiles. they could recieve, but not make calls, and then once the credit ran out which was pretty quickly cos everything is so expensive internationally, they then couldnt get any more. anyway not importnat. so that night while the older three went out clubbing, i was exhausted, but did manage to make the effort to go to the champs elisees again to see it all up in lights after dinner, and then we went home to bed early, around midnight.


am so a metro pro well the next morning we got up and did the packing up and checked out. we left out bags in the motel tho, which was good since we had about 4 hours before the others had to leave, and about 7 till i had to leave, so we didnt want to be dragging our baggage around for ages. anyway, we did a last bit of shopping and then all met up for lunch. turns out that erica, sole and robbi, who had been clubbing the night before, had got back so late, or early, that they decided not to go to bed at all, so they were rather tired as they hadnt slept! so we had a nice last lunch together at maccas, and then wandered around for a while before it was time to pick up the bags and go. that time unfortunately arrived, and we made our way to paris nord station again, where we did more tearful goodbyes and they all left to go catch the metro, then the bus, and then the plane back to italy. i, on the other hand, had nearly a three hour wait before my train left from paris nord to london. so i sat down quite happily and started to read. the time went by rather quickly, and then i was getting a bit nervous so wandered around just to make sure i knew exactly where i had to go and what time it all left and from where etc. went to the check-in just as soon as i was allowed, and apart from teh cranky lady who interrogated me (rather more harshly than was necessary in my opinion) as to why i was going to the uk, for how long etc, foudn my way into the waiting area no problem. then there was stil about 50 mins til the train was supposed to leave, so i sat down with the book again. gotta love jane austen :) did have a little conversation with a nice old english lady and a young man with a lap top while we were all waiting, but that is really rather irrellevant to this story. aanyway, so the time for boarding arrived, and they told us to sit down and wait cos there was a slight delay with cleaning the train. then the time they told us we woudl leave came and went and they told us to sit down again. then the time that the next train woudl have left came and they told us all to go and get new boarding passes cos somehow they were going to fit two trains worth of people into the one train. then they changed thier mind on seeing how many people were then pushing in a big clump towards the new-borading-pass-collection place and told all the people on the 2nd train to sit down and wait and to let the people n the 1st train go 1st. i was from the 1st train, which was by this time about 35mins late, and i managed to not get squashed in the crowd of pushy impatient people waiting to get on the train as soon as possible. anyway, then we got on the train, and it started, and then stopped, and thens tarted, and then stopped. after several announcements in which we were told that there were some 'technical dificulties' we eventually get underway, about an hour after when we were supposed to go. i rather enjoyed the trip then, since there was lovely countryside and a nice pair of americal girls sitting with me who were very nice and funny, and also another old english lady who was quite helpful in giving me some instructions and information about getting to northampton. for i was, indeed, headed to northampton to stay with my cousin Phil until mum, dad and naomi arrived int he country. i was also rather nervous about having to negotiate trains and things, especially since it was nighttime and people always say bad things about cities at night, right? well, once i got there all my fears were allayed, altho i had been slightly more worried since the lateness of the train mean i arrived around 9pm instead of 7.30, but it was a very easy trip to Euston station where i had to wait a little while and then caught a train to northampton. actually, i found all my recent experiuence with metro's in paris was very helpful, as i had absolutely no tourble negotiating the london underground. i rang phil and told him what time the train was going to arrive in Northampton and then waiting around for ages til it finally left just before 10pm, and arrived at Phils about 11.15. had no trouble finding phil on the platform, even tho hadnt seen him in about 8 years, and then went back to his place and pretty much straight to bed, as by this time i was rather spent.

well, contrary to when i started writing this blog, i am infact near Liecester at the moment, and we are about to leave to go to Yorkshire, and so i do not have time to finish the saga now. however, i do hope to update you wihtin the next week, and you can look foward to the following installments:

harry potter and the bludgey week in northampton

another day in london-town

brighton & hove, lewes & patcham

Bath: it must be the most jane austen-ey city in the world! and i suppose it is also has some lovely views....like Mr Darcy in a wet white shirt!

henges of standing stones-bloody traffic-lovely liecester and a cat!

and there will also be an entry about yorkshire i suspect, and that's about it from me this time. hometime is drawing ever closer.....14 days exactly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

love to everyone always

Ellen :)

posted by Ellen of Taranganba @ 9:17 AM