Well, its been an eventful week thus far. I'd love nothing more than to provide a fully detailed description of my exploits, but given that it is 3am here and I have a rehearsal at 10am I am going to keep it brief. Mostly because if I wait, the story will only get longer and more entertaining while my time will only get shorter. So to itemize my trip thus far:
1) AirFrance is AWESOME. Personalized TVs for every seat (games, new releases, TV shows, music.) The food is the best airline food I've ever had. This may seem trite to those of you who have only flown domestic airlines, but any international airline (i.e. KLM, Icelandair, Lufthansa) go all out on food. AirFrance is the best by far. Oh yeah, and they give you free champagne and alcohol of all sorts. Movie review: "The Bucket List"- Really good, but sad. "Charlie Wilsons' War"- started out good but I fell asleep during; " Dan, in real life"- funny moments but lame overall. However, the featur that I enjoyed the most was the delightful speaking voice of the pilot. Picture a cross between the chef from "The Little Mermaid" and the Merovingian from "The Matrix Reloaded/Matrix Revolutions". Twas glorious. Just an example of the speech cadence "madames e monsieurs, wee arr about to heet zee turboolanz"
2) The awesome-ness of AirFrance was inversely counteracted by the absolute chaos that is the customs line at Charles deGaulle airport (prounounced 'Sharl de-gaw'). You cannot possibly imagine the CF. Seriously, it was pretty much several thousand people trying to filter through 5 portals. Oh, and the rumour that the French do not use deoderant is entirely factual. I had been travelling for 12 hours and upon the plane landing in Paris, I was greeted as the best-smelling person in airport. Not a pleasant experience at 6am, when technically you are still on EST and it is midnight.
3) One uneventful flight to Torino, Italia, followed by a 2 hour bus ride, put me in Alba, Italy. An absolutely GORGEOUS little city with medeival flare topped off with Gucci, Fendi, and Dolce. HOT! For some reason, everytime I go to Europe it rains on my first day or two there. Which is what it has been doing. After arriving, I dropped my luggage off at my apartment on Via Cavour, then went out with 2 of my flatmates for a late lunch (yay hummous and red wine!!) Afterwards we went to an orientation-type meeting where we got flat keys. Woohoo!
The street where I live...
4) Went out for dinner at Vin Cafe, then to Ashkay for their double-pint Hoegarden's (YUM), then to McLeod's for some Tennents. Made friends with a few Italians and an awesome Macedonian waiter named Alex. At 2am I finally decided to come back to the flat. Now, this is where the first good story comes into play. I have one key to get into the apartment building and one key to get into the actual apartment. Well, at 2am, I discovered that the key that gets me into the apartment was, in fact, non-functional. Being a polite individual (and also being minorly inebriated), I decided that the best course of action would be to NOT wake up my flatmates and to sleep on the marble steps until a reasonable hour to wake them up. FYI marble stairs = not comfortable.
Me and my buddy Alex
This entry seems to be getting lengthy. Time to post pics and go to bed :-)
Mike at his little desk
The street where I live...
4) Went out for dinner at Vin Cafe, then to Ashkay for their double-pint Hoegarden's (YUM), then to McLeod's for some Tennents. Made friends with a few Italians and an awesome Macedonian waiter named Alex. At 2am I finally decided to come back to the flat. Now, this is where the first good story comes into play. I have one key to get into the apartment building and one key to get into the actual apartment. Well, at 2am, I discovered that the key that gets me into the apartment was, in fact, non-functional. Being a polite individual (and also being minorly inebriated), I decided that the best course of action would be to NOT wake up my flatmates and to sleep on the marble steps until a reasonable hour to wake them up. FYI marble stairs = not comfortable.
Me and my buddy Alex
This entry seems to be getting lengthy. Time to post pics and go to bed :-)
Mike at his little desk
2 comments:
Yay for the update! I can't imagine how uncomfortable marble stairs would be, but I trust the key situation has since worked itself out and your sleeping arrangements are a bit nicer. Keep having a blast!!
I think alcohol is free on all international flights. It definitely was to Australia. But I suppose that was to keep us sedate on such a looong flight.
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