1. You will miss a train (and it won’t be the end of the world). We missed the first train we were ever supposed to take on our own. That’s right. The very first one. We were supposed to leave the train station in Florence at 7:00 am, and we just didn’t make it. It was like I was watching a scene from a movie. First, we couldn’t figure out how to validate a train ticket (5 minutes), then I ran into a grouchy Trenitalia employee who insisted he didn’t speak English but proceeded to use flawless English when he finally got tired of my Italian (10 minutes), then we couldn’t find the platform (3 minutes). As we ran, the train slowly started to move. We had missed it. Luckily, the conductor in the train one platform over had seen the whole ordeal and, laughing hysterically, told us his train was headed to the same destination and would leave in about 45 minutes. No big.
2. Planned adventures are great, but unplanned adventures are better. Since we missed our first train of the day, we found ourselves with roughly two and a half hours to kill in Pisa (yes, as in “the leaning tower of”). So what did we do? Well, of course we grabbed a map and ran across town to see the famous tower! We snapped all the cheesy tourist pics and ordered a cappuccino and a pastry for a late breakfast. We also encountered some of the nicest Italians we’ve met thus far. Getting lost in Pisa was probably the highlight of our day.
3. Don’t expect cake and ice cream… It was one of my roommates’ birthdays on Saturday and we were lost in the middle of Italy. We did celebrate a day early with gelato in the park, but the birthday itself wasn’t quite what we expected. We had planned on spending the day hiking through quaint little villages then lounging on beach chairs by the Mediterranean Sea. Actually, though, we wandered aimlessly through little Italian streets, ran after trains, spoke Italian like a group of Kindergartners and generally participated very few birthday-related festivities. At least we came out of it with a good story… Happy Bairthday to you?
4. Americans are loud. We can’t help it. Everywhere we go, someone stares. I have no idea how they do it, but if you happen to board a train car full of Italians, no one talks. If they do, it’s only a whisper. Every time we boarded we would start talking in a whisper and slowly gather steam until we were talking in full voice without even realizing it. Train rides can be long—hours at a time. How do you go that long without talking? The answer is simple. I don’t know because I’m a loud American. Feel free to stare now.
5. Not having technology changes the way you do things—or at least it should. We planned on meeting a friend at the train station in Cinque Terre. Once we were in the train station in Florence, sans computers and phones, we had no way to get a hold of him and let him know we would be running 3-4 hours late… Oops! At that point, there was nothing we could do. Thank goodness he had the common sense to strike out on the trails with another group, or he would’ve been sitting in the train station for hours awaiting our arrival. Life without technology is hard, but in many other ways it has been completely freeing.
6. Your Pepperdine family will always be there for you. Once we got to Cinque Terre, we were a little frazzled. Upon arrival, we had had to catch yet another train to meet the person who was supposed to be renting us an apartment. She wasn’t anywhere to be found. We had rushed for nothing. Just then, I first laid eyes on my fellow students (who were all having the time of their lives, apparently). I could’ve cried tears of pure joy. I didn’t; I’m just saying I could have. We weren’t alone! They made my day when they offered to scour the streets of Cinque Terre for the non-existent apartment we had supposedly rented online. It really made my day when they stuck around until we met the guy who had the keys. If not for them, we might have turned back and gone home. If we had gone home, we would’ve missed out on some truly incredible memories and one unbelievably beautiful hike the next day. Words aren’t enough to express how thankful I am.
7. You’re going to sleep in some sketchy places. When you’re on a budget, you take what you can get. Sometimes that means sleeping in a pink apartment that sits in the middle of the woods at the top of roughly 300 stairs, like it did for us. The man who rents out these apartments might even sleep in a little straw hut alongside the building. Sometimes that might mean fitting 8 people into a hostel meant for 4, like it did for another group. Sometimes that might even mean sleeping on a train or in a train station. All you know is that it’s less expensive than a hotel room, and sleeping “here”, wherever here may be, means that you can go somewhere else equally exciting the next weekend.
8. Alone time is underrated. Alone time is something you don’t really realize that you need until suddenly you don’t have any at all. Sometimes, you have to break away from the pack and take a walk along the sea, just a girl and her thoughts. Everyone does it in their own way, but everybody needs to get some “me” time in. Just five minutes can make all the difference in the world. This, obviously, goes for more than just travel, but it becomes strikingly obvious when you’re surrounded by people 24/7.
9. You’ll make it. You’ll make it to Pisa. You’ll make it to Cinque Terre. You’ll even make it home again. No matter what all went wrong this weekend, we made it (cue The Beatles’ “A Little Help From My Friends”)! You freak out, you stay calm, you pray, you laugh, you find friends, you find a map, you find anyone who speaks English, you do whatever you can. In the end, you’ll make it.
10. Have fun. When travelling, have fun above all else. It’s easy to get down on yourself if enough stuff goes wrong. And in our case, a lot went wrong! You have to be okay with that, and make the most of what you have. Sometimes you can’t change your situation and you just have to accept the fact that you’re lost somewhere in Europe (or South America/Asia) and just make something fun out of it. Bring a deck of cards, strike up a conversation with a local to practice your language skills or just wander. You never know; maybe those are the times that will make the best stories. We’re already laughing about our weekend disasters!
Luckily, we did make it all the way to Cinque Terre and did successfully hike/swim in the Mediterranean/enjoy the gorgeous views. I highly recommend it. If you do go, make sure to eat some pesto for me. It was delicious. I would also like to point out that at some point during the last week, I started calling the villa in Florence ‘home’. I can’t pinpoint when it started, but somehow that’s what it is. After our whirlwind adventure, I couldn’t be happier to be home right now.
