We wake up a little before 6am and pack our bags, of the five nights at Leanne's the traffic hasn't woken us once. The day is grey and the ground is wet, looks like the weather we were promised for the week has finally arrived - lucky for us it's late. By ten to seven the three of us are out of the house and we wait at the station for the 7:03 train. I'm having nervous, really concerned about whether or not we'll make our shuttle. We change trains at Bank, I keep crossing my fingers. By the time we get to Liverpool Street I feel sick. We race out of the station as fast as we can and through the streets, as I round the last corner I see the shuttle and our driver is about to close the door. One minute later and I think we would have seen the shuttle pulling out. He puts our bags in, we say goodbye to Leanne, and the next second we begin our trip to Luton! Wow, I have never cut anything that fine before and hopefully never will again. Lesson learned.
We have a lovely drive out to the airport, the roads surrounding London seem a lot more like home due to all the greenery, there do seem to be a lot less gas stations though, I see just two during our drive, the only ones I had seen since Auckland. Central London just doesn't seem to do them, same as public toilets and rubbish bins, it's rather strange. We get to Luton airport with time to do all of the normal airport jazz, broken up by eating breakfast, lunch, and buying the most expensive jandals in history (best jandals ever, no regrets).
It's all easy enough and our plane ride is great, favourite part is flying over Switzerland - it's pretty cool as we can see all the snowy mountains below us. I waste some time doing my sudoku, have a snooze, and then we're there!
Culture shock. No problems clearing the airport, customs, etc was easy to navigate. Stepped out of the air conditioned airport and got hit by the blanket that is 29 degrees. Our hotel had looked easy to find - walk out of airport, across the road and walk a few hundred meters. Not so easy. Got to the end of that road, hadn't found it. Shit. Maybe we took the wrong road? It was possible. So we walked down the next road, still not looking promising. There wasn't even the idea of wind to cool us down and the area around us comprised of telephone boxes with gardens growing inside them, condom vending machines, and houses that ranged from incredibly beautiful to derelict. Thankfully a man on a bicycle stopped and pointed our sorry asses in the right direction - back to where we came from. This time however, we were using the street number not the name of the "hotel". Our "hotel" definitely deserves it's quotation marks. It had a totally different name to the one we had been looking for, and it looked like a really run down apartment block with a middle aged gentleman and a teenage boy smoking outside. I cannot stress enough how it didn't look like a hotel. Apparently it was though, and we were told to take a seat with the smoking man while the teenager went to grab the girl who ran the place.
When she emerged, she took us inside, apparently they had overbooked - I struggle to believe that, because how?! Anyway, no problem, she says, I have another hotel in town, better location, wifi, TV, much nicer and closer to everything - same price! The man outside will drive you. Um... Ok? Wasn't like we had much in the way of an alternative and we'd already walked far enough in that heat thank you very much. My big bag got whisked out of my hand, oh god, that's tourist 101, and we were bustled into the car. To his credit, despite the fact that my seatbelt didn't work, he was a really good driver, however my spirits dropped again when we pulled up outside a ratty looking set of shops and were handed over to a smartly dressed young man. We were led a short way down a service lane and through a set of doors into a dim room. He crammed us into an elevator smaller than your average public toilet stall and sent us to the 4th floor. I was getting major separation anxiety from my bag at this stage but there simply wasn't room in the elevator for it to come up with us. I reasoned with myself that there was nothing of any real value in it - just clothes, etc, but it was still a tense few minutes as we waited to see if he would follow us up into the grimy looking corridor.
Fortunately he did, and he had my bag! He led us into a beautiful white apartment, living area, 2 bathrooms, and 4 bedrooms of which he gave us the key to one. Things were looking up! We dumped our stuff and followed him up to his office to check in, where he gave us a map and directions to everything! Yay! We headed out to explore Pisa. What an incredibly surreal place, incredibly old buildings all around us, unlike London where they had remained nestled between newer ones. Of course we had to check out the Leaning Tower - very cool, before wandering off to find some dinner.
We ended up at a lovely little pizzeria in a square filled with eateries and mainly locals, many with their young children who were still running around when we left which must have been getting close to 10pm. The sky went the most amazing colour as it got dark - there weren't any clouds, so it was like looking at a lit blue screen, just a constant deep blue above the buildings. Looking at that while eating our HUGE pizza and salad was quite strange. Neither of us can quite believe that we are here. I eat white chocolate and ginger gelato on the way back to our room.
Upon arriving at our room, we discover the adjoining rooms full of Italians who don't seem super stoked with their new arrivals. There's also no hot water, and the power seems to go out for no reason... We decide not to stay a second night, and to instead take our chances with Cinque Terre.
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