Day 19, Rome to Boston, October 8th

Ah, it's nice typing this on a real keyboard.

Woke up at 6 am, said goodbye to the lovely son and mother duo who ran our hostel.  We gave them the fan I had bought in Paris, and they had us write our names down on a sticky note to put on it.  Funny people.

Took all of our luggage and went straight to the Vatican Museums!  Got there shortly before 8, and we were maybe 10th in line.  Waited for an hour in line, then the museum opened at 9.  Because there was a separate line for tour groups, we still had to wait 15 minutes before getting in.  Still, the line must have been immense behind us.  We checked our bags and headed in.

There was a lot of art.  No holy relics, piece of the cross, Vial Saint's blood, or secret witch hunter manuals.  Just a lot of art.  There was a cool room with sculptures of various animals, but that's about all I can remember except for:

The sistine chapel.  I had pictured the famous image of god and adam as huge, stretching across the whole ceiling.  Instead, it was pretty small, and part of maybe 10 other panels depicting other things.  Check!

We probably stayed there for two hours.  Then we had another terrible meal at the cafeteria.  I think the issue is Italian food is mostly bread, and Italian bread is sub par.  Reiter tried to order a fruit cup and calzone, and wound up with a cup of fruit juice and what appeared to be bread with some tomato sauce on it.

We headed back, caught a few trains and metros, and got to the airport.  Flight was pretty delayed.  This was the flight to Frankfurt, where we would catch a Lufthansa home.  On the way over I read a couple hundred pages of Inferno by Dan Brown, which is about what you would expect.

As we were coming in to land at Frankfurt, the guy next to Reiter saw his ticket and said "Looks like your boarding time was 5 minutes ago."  We had a lovely conversation with him for the rest of the ride.  When the plane landed, two Chinese guys and then the whole plane got up to their bags.  However, we weren't docked and the seatbelt sign was still on, to the flight attendants came around and yelled at people.  The Chinese guys didn't understand, so it took a while and the whole plane started laughing at them.  It was bizarre actually.

We sprinted to our next flight, ominously at gate Z50, which had to be the last possible gate.  Fittingly, to get there we had to run through a gift shop.  "Exit Europe through the gift shop," that's all I could think.

We got there, and were the second to last people to board.  I think we had about 5 minutes to spare.  Not sure if they were going to hold the plane for us, and I wasn't sure our checked luggage was going to come through.

Flight back started off great.  I watched Star Trek: Into Darkness, which was great.  Then I watched 2001: Space Odyssey, which I hated. Sorry movie fans, I just didn't like that movie for a variety of reasons.  The parts with HAL were great, the parts with the Monolith were passable, the majority of the movie, 2 or three minute long shots of spaceships moving, are simply not acceptable entertainment anymore.

Then, the harrowing part of the flight started.  We had about 45 minutes of intense turbulence.  I hate turbulence, and was only reminded to start getting nauseous when Reiter downed some Dramamine and started meditating and the people around us started throwing up.  The person behind us threw into a paper bag, then tried to give it to a flight attendant - but the attendants were all strapped in and couldn't get it.

It was terrible, actually one of the worse 45 minutes of my life.  Being scared and nauseous for an extended period of time with nothing you can do about it was horrendous. I alternated between trying to watch 2001: Space Odyssey to distract myself form the fear, getting nauseous, looking away to quell the nausea, then then getting back to the move to distract myself.

Anyway, neither Reiter and I wound up vomiting, and then I watched most of Man of Steel (the superman movie) which I enjoyed (mostly).

Then we landed, went through customs, and Liz was nice enough to pick us up!  Yay!

Italy:  By far it had the most interesting stuff of any place we went to - Venice, Pompeii, and St. Peter's Basilica were incredible.  It also had the best hostels we stayed at.  However, the food was terrible, and the people seemed ruder than anywhere else.  Overall though, great experience.

Overall:  Yay Eurotrip!  My three favorite things were Pompeii, St. Peter's Basilica, and Salisbury Cathedral.  Stonehenge gets an honorable mention, as well as Venice, the French War Museum, and the British Museum.  Worst thing was the turbulence on the flight back!  We didn't really have any disasters (though we did have some planning issues once or twice such as Windsor and Vesuvius) so I'm having a tough time thinking of other things that I really didn't like.  The pickpocket attacking us was certainly memorable, but not a bad experience.  Lots of things checked off, but I am very glad to be home where everybody speaks English, I like the food, and everything is as it should be!