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I'm back in Turin, as of last night. It was weirdly sad leaving Rome (I even cried a bit in the taxt as we drove past the forum), but I'm going to be back there next week so I don't have long to wait!
I haven't blogged in a while, because I ran out of big things that were manageable enough to see. I wanted to go to the Villa Borghese and the Vatican, but I figured that I should save those for Topdeck and the other things (like a dat trip to Tivoli) I was too nervous to do alone and everyone else wanted to stay in the city... But I have the rest of my life to visit Hadrian's Villa! For my last couple of days in Rome I just wandered and revisited places like the Trevi Fountain - I bought a new RED dress which I'm quite excited about, but really that's it... Europe is so expensive that visiting all the museums used up nearly all my money!
I was at La Controra hostel (the best hostel in the world) for the first five nights of my trip, and then they were booked out so I had to move. I'd prebooked a bed at a place called the Ivanhoe Hostel and when I got there it looked okay, but the guy on the front desk was like "oh, your room isn't clean yet and lockout starts at 11am so that we can clean, so you have to dump your bags in the kitchen and go away until 5pm". So I had to leave my laptop, passport and all my STA travel information under a table in a crowded kitchen and go out in the rain knowing that even if I wanted to, I couldn't go back. IT SUCKED. But then, as I was sitting in a cafe missioning my way through a mega pizza, it started snowing, and by the time I left it was insanely heavy and so so cool! So I went down for my daily wander to the Colosseum and my Arch to take some photos in the snow which was nice, and then, soaking wet and freezing, I went back to the hostel. When I got there I met a girl called Daniella who was in bed, so I followed suit and jumped into my bunk and watched Gossip Girl for a bit. Later on, a couple of girls came in who had been there for a couple of days and started telling us all the ways in which the hostel sucked. I managed to add a few, even after only half a day
- The internet was broken
- There were bedbugs in some of the rooms
- You had to pay for breakfast
- The rooms were tiny, with too many beds
- The windows didn't shut properly
- There was no heating
- The wall next to my bed was cracked and broken and held together with masking tape
And there's probably more that I haven't remembered! Needless to say, I rebooked for La Controra for the next night and ran for it as soon as I was up and packed the next day. Saturday night at La Controra was so much fun! Kate and Josh, an Australian couple who I'd met a few nights earlier were being picked up by an airport shuttle at 3:30am so most of the folk in the hostel decided to stay up until they left. We managed, and got through about four bottles of limoncello, a bottle of cointreau, three bottles of beer and a few bottles of wine between us and just chatted and the boys sang a lot and it was great. Valleria, one of the guys who works at the hostel, was out there too (as were Martina and Renata who also worked there) and he was talking about his penchant for older women and we all just laughed for hours...
So now I'm back in Turin. It's very peaceful and quiet now, but so so cold. Nothing much is planned, but Christmas is only a few days away and then on the 28th of December I'm back off to Rome for Topdeck! AHHHH! Hopefully the bad weather around Europe won't effect anything too badly..
I'll write again to fill everyone in on how a real Italian Christmas works!
xoxo
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