My Trip to Italy - Day 0: Plane Rides!

For the past week, I was out of town for vacation! I went to Rome, Italy for 4 days, and I had a wonderful time there. I had fun eating their food and going to famous places around town. But how did I get there? Well, in this post, I will talk about the plane rides getting there. I will try to post everything I remember about my trip, as it is still fresh in my mind, and I still remember about 95% of it.

This will be split up in 6 parts: 

• The plane ride to Rome
• Italy: Day 1
• Italy: Day 2
• Italy: Day 3
• Italy: Day 4
• The plane ride back to Vancouver

Let's begin!

Day 0: Plane RIdes!

Alright. To get to Rome from Vancouver, you NEED to take at least one connecting flight, so I stopped at Toronto. My flight to Toronto was at 10 AM, so I went to Vancouver (YVR) at 8 AM. I passed security easily, and got to the gate at 8:30 AM. A bit early, I decided to charge up my laptop, my phone, and read Fairy Tail manga (on book 7 at the time). 

Soon enough, it was time for boarding. It was just over a 4 hour flight to Toronto (YYZ), and while we supposed to arrive there around 5:30 PM local time (2:30 PM PST), our freaking Air Canada plane left late, and we arrived at around 6:40 PM. 

What did I do on the plane? I had window seat while my parents had the 2 seats on my left. I watched four episodes of Big Bang Theory - Season 11, and half of Toy Story 3 (yup), because I actually never watched it before, and I was saving the action movies for later. 

Screw this bear.

I also played some of their games, such as Chess and a couple trivia games. One thing I was feeling as we got closer to YYZ was my hunger. Wow, my dinner was practically going to be my lunch.

Getting off the plane, I looked around the airport for food shops. I recognized a few of them, such as A&W and Vina, the Vietnamese restaurant. But I want to find a Tim Hortons! Too bad it was too far, I actually took a quick walk around the nearby area. I settled for A&W, and my parents ordered A&W and Vina respectively. My order was worth $7.90 though! That's a dollar more than the usual price in the mall. Oh well, airport prices. Also, I saw a couple "groups" at the airport. There was a Canadian Rugby team sitting nearby the table I ate dinner (my mom overheard them that they were going to a northern Europe country, I forgot which country), and many Special Olympics athletes walking around the food court area and sitting in the domestic gates, maybe waiting for a plane, going west.

After dinner, my parents and I walked to the international gates (remember, I only flew domestically) we saw that our flight to Italy was delayed by 45 minutes, from 8:45 PM to 9:30 PM, due to other planes getting delays at our gate. Our gate got moved, too. It was just a domino effect, to be honest. But this airport was buzzing around my area! Plenty of people were walking toward their gates and seats. I even walked through an "echo" area, and I only noticed when I started talking in the middle.

Hello! Hello! Hello!

Meanwhile, to pass the time, I connected to the internet on my laptop, but the internet was slow! There were many things going on in the airport though. They have seats were you can go on tablets to play games and go on the internet, you can order food and drinks from it, too. Pretty cool, but it took up a lot of space, as there wasn't many room for just seats on the side. I watched a baseball game on one of the TV's above, and read more Fairy Tail. 

Orange: Where I arrived from and ate dinner.

Red: Where our gate used to be.

Blue: Where it is now.

Purple: This area was buzzing!

Oh, and I ate a Kit Kat.

By now, I was getting tired. Fortunately, the time is now 9:10 PM, and they called us down for the boarding call. It took ANOTHER hour just to take off from Toronto, and I don't think we were in the air until 10:30 PM.

What did I do on THIS Air Canada? Well, I watched Ready Player One, and it honestly wasn't bad, I absolutely loved the first 20, 30 minutes of the movie, up to where Parzival/Wade first met Art3mis/Samantha, but it was a bit confusing near the end. Getting the three keys were fun, but it was very fast paced when it kept switching from VR world and real world. One character I liked was the young Sho/Zhou. The 11 year old seemed cool.

Overall Grade: B

I played more trivia games, and was deciding when to go to sleep. It was getting late, sure it was already 1:30 AM Toronto time, but it sure only felt like 10:30 PM. So I decided to finish off the Toy Story 3 movie. And I liked it! Many plots and many places were shown in the movie, and it flows well. That's all I got to say about it.

Overall Grade: A

Now, it's almost 12 AM (PST), but I'm still not sleepy. I watch more Big Bang Theory, but after that, I know that I need some sleep, otherwise I'll be very tired walking in Rome on the first day. I sleep for maybe 2-3 hours, and when I wake up, I was drowsy, but don't you normally feel that on the plane? Anyways, there's now about 2 hours left on the plane ride, and checking on the plane map, I saw that we are now in Europe. Breakfast (or lunch? It was already 12 PM Rome time) was served shortly, and I later brought out my laptop to watch some Italian based episodes of The Simpsons. How fitting.

Soon enough, we arrive in Italy at 1:30 PM local time, 4:30 AM Vancouver time. We get off the plane, and it actually took us a while to find passport control and the baggage area. I still don't know if we took the shortest path, or we went the long way, because my parents were saying to just follow the baggage claims sign.

Reaching passport control, there was a sign that said that if you hold a Canadian, US, South Korean, Japanese passport, you can take an express lane (EDIT: there are 2 other countries I forgot). It was pretty quick, they had an eye reader, and all I needed was a stamp from the booth that I was admitted into Italy. We got our luggage 15 minutes later, and another 5 minutes later, I was in a taxi heading to the hotel my parents booked in the city.

Our taxi driver was very nice, showing us a tour around the city, because later on I realized that he could had taken a shorter route, but he went another way. The thing is, the flat rate from the airport to downtown is 50 Euros. He was generous, and pointed out attractions along the way, such as Piazza Venezia and Park Villa Borghese.

Blue Circle: Hotel we were staying in.

Red: Possible route driver took.

Purple: Quicker route driver could have taken.

Stray observations I noticed while riding in the taxi:

• There were graffiti on the walls. Maybe it's just that neighborhood.
• Cars don't put signals to change lanes all the time.
• Parking is very tight. Many cars are parked close together.
• Most cars are small. Because they need to fit in the small parking spaces!
• Right-of-way goes to vehicles more than pedestrians. Haha.
• Most of the houses are painted light brown, peach, and pink, and tan. Some type of light color.

At 2:45 PM, we arrive at the hotel and check in. I steal a candy from the bowl that they have, and we go to our room. That's where I will stop for now, hope you enjoyed this post, there will be 5 more posts of the Rome adventure. Stay tuned!