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Rule #1 for survival in Italy: They talk to you in Italian, you answer in Espanol (or slow English with an Italian accent)

BY ONEIKA RAYMOND

My year living in Mexico is serving me well on this trip. We arrived in Rome two days ago- beautiful despite the chaos and torrential rain last night- and I have spoken more Spanish in these two days than in all of the time since I quitted my life in Monterrey, the pearl of northeast Mexico.

English here doesn t seem to be all that well spoken. So with some “creativity”, I have been speaking a hybrid language known as Spantalian with a good dash of Tony Danza/Soprano style English and a pinch of a wide array of hand signals.

Our trip here has been filled thus far from the requisite sight-seeing but has been a comedy of errors of sorts because:

-Liebling forgot his sailing “driver s ” licence at home in London (important since he is the sole driver of his boat). He realized this when we got to the airport in London, a mere 50 minutes before our flight to Rome was to take off. (He ended up frantically calling a friend and they scanned a copy and he found a scanned copy in his email inbox anyway so things are fine now thank the lord Jesus Christ whew!)

– My bag was severly overweight and I had to dump a fair bit of stuff in the airport trash bin. We took budget airline RyanAir (shudder) and they only allow a checked bag of 15kg (say what!!!)… After paying 50 pence to weigh my bag, I realized I was 5 kg (11 lbs) overweight. The penalty per kilo overweight is 20 quid… And I was not prepared to pay 100 quid to truck old clothes and shampoo over to Italy so with some quick rearranging and dumping I was able to get my luggage to a cool 15.2 kg. The lady at check-in didn t charge me for the .2 kilo. God bless her.

-In an episode of divine incompetence I dropped my bloody camera while handing it to Liebling so he could take a picture of me in front of the Victor Emanuelle monument near the Piazza Venezia in Rome (or maybe it was Liebling, rather, who failed to grasp it as I passed it to him). It was on and landed lens first… Totally broken… with no hope of repair. I was not a happy camper. Quite the angry camper actually. So me an Liebling went halfsies on a new one so I am now the proud owner of a brand spanking new Nikon S570, an upgrade from my previous Nikon Coolpix. Booyah.

-We booked a train ticket from Rome to Naples, then another train ticket from Naples to Sorrento. Except that the train ticket from Naples to Sorrento wasn t a train ticket, but a boat ticket, leaving from a port farrrrrr away. I didn t travel light. We dont have time to transfer from the train station in Naples to the boat station in Naples. So bright an early this morning I marched myself to the train kiosk in Rome and used my rusty Spanish to get a reimbursement for the Naples-Sorrento portion of our ticket. It worked! See, I told you that Spanish has been a great help, muchas gracias!

Anyway, despite the requisite drama we are having a fab time! Liebling has now had pizza two days in a row and even had pizza twice on the first day. I have been eating like a champ and have been disdainfully surveying my expanding waist line since our hotel room has a full length mirror. Mamma Mia!!

We board the train to Sorrento in about 2 hours and I must leave this internet cafe because surely Liebling is wondering where I am and this Bangladeshi internet cafe is creeping me out and the guy who works here is watching Bollywood movies on the computer behind me and it is LOUD. And there is the overpowering smell of some kind of ethnic food and it is making me feel a little quesy.

So over and out from the land of pizza. Ciao!

SHARING IS CARING

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  • Year after year these airports are getting stingier and stingier with their luggage allowance. I remember the days when practically all of them would allow two 32kg suitcases.

  • glad to hear that, despite what some might consider small setbacks, you're getting past them and enjoying italy! yay for a new camera and lots of pizza!

  • @MsBeautySoul: I know right? This is getting ridiculous. You mean to tell me that I have to PAY to bring my own stuff on board? What the heck?!? I think for major international flights most carriers will still allow two 23kg bags… At least as far as I remember that s still the case with KLM and Air Canada, which I ve flown recently. Cathay Pacific, which I flew a month ago, allowed 2x32kg as well.

    @kay: Italy is hype! Though I m sad about the demise of my old camera, this one is definitely an upgrade! Blessing in disguise!

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