day six - missed the boat on everything :(

Today began with a buffet breakfast. There was scrambled eggs, bacon, fresh fruits, an assortment of pastries, an assortment of juices, cold cuts, and yogurt. Unfortunately Nat did not sleep a wink all night and got up at 7am to go downstairs to work on her computer. Since there was no symphony of noise coming from her, i slept soundly for a good seven hours. (I can't wait for James to accompany us in London. I'm sure the whole orchestra will be heard each night from the both of them - oh goodie, surround sound for me!)

Last night we had loosely decided not to attend the first meet and greet. It was a buffet brunch and I'm not really into buffets unless it's a buffet of sashimi -mmm...i miss that so much right now...And to be very honest, we had met some of the Reggio participants that are staying in the same hotel as us and I'm not a big fan of theirs. Maybe I'm just a snob or maybe I'm having way too much fun making fun of Nat, i mean writing my blog that i basically just keep to myself. But majority of the people we've met seem too pretentious and full of themselves. Everyone is throwing around what rank they are in the field of ECE. This is not my cup of tea. It's a long and difficult story to explain so I'll leave it at that. The people here seem to have found "God"; they worship Reggio. Now, i know i have travelled half way around the world myself and have, since i started in this field, been very interested and intrigued with this philosophy, but by no means do i think this is it; this is the one and only way to teach children. Okay enough with this tone, it's time to recap the highlights of today!

Sadly, not much happened today except we missed everything. So, as i was saying, we had loosely decided not to attend this buffet aka our first meet and greet. I've been dying to see what Angela (the liaison between Reggio and North Americans) looks like. I picture her to have dark curly/wavy hair with very fair skin and glasses and on the heavier side. I'll report back tomorrow to see if i was right! Nat wasn't feeling so great this morning and my desire not to go made us leave the hotel late - we left our hotel at around 11:50am when the bus was leaving the meeting spot at noon. As we casually strolled along the main street in Reggio, we soon began to realize that 95% of the shops were closed because it was a Sunday! With only two minutes to go before the bus was scheduled to leave, we raced to the meeting spot only to get there 10 minutes after. As we approached the big parking lot, we saw a bus pull out. Now picture this, two Canadians running with their arms waving like mad towards the big bus, the bus slowly and hesitantly stopped. We asked if the bus was for the tour but it was just their regular Reggio transportation and no tour. We had missed the bus! Darn it! We then strolled back to the closed shops area and found a nice restaurant for lunch. We made reservations for 2pm and went back to the hotel for a short snooze and then meandered back out. We had it all planned out - we were going to have ample time to consume a delicious homemade meal at the first original Reggio restaurant ever opened in this town. After this delicious meal we had plenty of time to have a tea. Then we realized we were running late again!!! We ran to the meeting place again and looked around. There was no bus, no large group of tourists...we missed our second attempt to a group event! We missed the city walking tour! We dragged our feet off this deserted parking lot and decided to make up our own walking tour when we bumped into one of the five tour groups! We finally made it and note, this is a tour that was already paid for with our tuition money and entitled to. We weren't being cheap this time! We learned a few facts here and there and left the group about an hour after.

Oh, but the biggest lesson learnt today was that Nat can shop even if the stores are closed! OMG! Window shopping is even more boring then the actual thing!

Today was a very uneventful day and hopefully tomorrow I will have more stories to share. Time for bed as our first class begins tomorrow and we all know that we can't be late for that! Wish us luck!

day five - reggio, here we come!

we had our usual breakfast on the main floor of our hotel room again this morning. This time, we took our time since we didn't need to be at the train station until just after noon. A decision was made the night before that we would be commuting to the train station by taxi. 15 euros later, we were there waiting to board. The signs were so confusing. There were two trains leaving for Reggio at around the same time as stated on our tickets. Luckily or unluckily a lady wearing a blue blazer, with no red stripe, no name card and with her fly down and a piece of her shirt sticking through the hole, helped us. After being rejected by two other train information workers, we were desperate and really didn't want to miss our train to Reggio - the purpose of our trip. So this lady came up to us and asked if we needed help. Since no one else was helping us, we leeched onto her. As travel savvy as Nat and I are, we quickly realized that there was something fishy. Like I said, she had no red stripe on her jacket and no name card was the first give away but the really big one was that she was actually helping us! She's the one who seeked us and not the other way around! She was even helping Nat carry her suitcase. As much as her shoulder appreciated the help, Nat decided that it would be much safer to carry her own. She helped us lug our suitcases up onto the train, directed us to our seats and even waited till we caught our breathe before hitting us up for 5 euros each! Yes, she was nice and really helpful but really? 5 euros? I think she deserved something but not 5 euros each. I saw Nat reaching for a 5 and made an excutive decision just to split the lost of the 5 euros instead of 10.

The train ride this time wasn't too bad for me. No gravel needed! So, what did i do for 6 hours on this train? I ate some chips, had a Fanta, ate a quarter of Nat's sandwich, listened to my ipod, took a power nap...but the most entertaining and time consuming event was catching Natacha sleeping on the train! On the plane ride here, she had taken a picture of my sleeping habits on the plane - awkward position with a black toque. So i thought we had the same type of humour and that she would appreciate me recording such events as these. I took many good ones! My favourite one (and again i will post visuals once i figure out how!) was when she had her mouth wide open and the passenger next to her looked identical. They were both busy catching flies! Pay back is going to be a bitch but luckily Nat forgot her camera charger so no pay back this time!

Finally we made it to Reggio and am happy to report that we skipped taking a taxi to our hotel from the train station as it was only about a 10 minute walk... so tomorrow begins the first day of this infamous Reggio Emilia study group. I'll report back soon!

Day four - a loud sigh and an angry mumble doesn't mean "come back soon!"

Since we're a day ahead of my original itinerary, we decided to add in the sights of the Colosseum and this Campo di Fiori area that Nat was dying to see and swore it had great shopping. It took some time to convince Nat to go see some old run down columns but in the end she said it was one of the best sights she's seen. Again, the cheapness was apparent. So, firstly, i had no intensions of taking a tour of the inside of this empty sight and it was comfirmed by a non-business sense tour guide that recommended us not to go in because there was nothing to see! Secondly, there were these men dressed up in Roman clothes that were selling themselves to tourits for a picture with them. As smart as we were (or should i say as cheap as were are!) we strategically positioned ourselves one at a time in front of these dressed up Romans and captured what could have cost us a wasted 10 euros! Soon they figured us out and we had to move on.

Our next stop was the Campo di Fiori which is a neighbourhood that is full of flowers by day and then a "party town" by night. We missed the flowers by the time we got there and left just before this supposedly night life were to start. By the looks of it, Nat's tour book had lied about this place! It said the shopping was amazing and the only thing that was amazing about the shopping was that it only took Nat 15 minutes to walk through these stores while pouting! I did feel bad for her as she did look really disappointed by this mislead information...

Then we walked along this scary street (Via Giulia) that was built for people to walk all the way to the Vatican. We just used it to walk home. Before going home, we filled our tummies at a place Nat likes to refer to as an "Italian Denny's". It was pretty good and i drank wine! Me! And a whole glass too! We then left (as it felt like they were kicking us out anyway by the way they kept coming to take my salad away and then giving us the bill before we asked for it) and walked next door to a little coffee shop. Man, oh man, Italians just don't love us! Now, i don't understand a word of Italian but i'm sure a loud sigh and an angry mumble that sounds kinda like "Mama mia" followed by some 'f' sounding words doesn't mean "come back soon, we enjoy your company!" We did meet a nice Asian fellow at this coffee shop. So while Nat was annoying, i mean ordering our drinks from the man behind the counter, i made my way to the back to use the little girl's room. As I was approaching the much needed toilet for a tinkle, i heard a beautiful, familiar sound...no, it wasn't James's sweet voice!...it was English! A group of New Yorker's and Californians whom i do not know how they are all related came to Rome for a group visit. As the wine was working through my body, i felt the verbal diarrhea coming out..."you speak English!" i speak English!" what a dork i was but hey, i was excited to understand someone other than Nat! He's from London but orignally from Cali. I again got stupidly excited and announced, maybe even shouted at him that we were too going to make our way to London. As he reaches into his wallet to look for his business card so we can contact him when we get there, i told him not to be offended as i probably wouldn't look him up...I guess he was taken aback with my comment because he stopped fumbling through his wallet for this contact card and tried to change the subject. In my defence, i wasn't being rude to him, i was just being my blunt and honest self. And really, what were we all going to do, have a foursome? So Nat and I decided to have a party in our room with the wine that we purchased earlier that day and with my new lego ipod speaker thing that i just recently purchased, and we did just that.
Nat will probably kill me for recording this next part but i really need to share. Nat's quite the entertainer while we are sleeping. Not only is she singing to me (like really singing with words), she also adds a base to her song (her snoring) and sometimes she even has a rapping part (her talking)! sorry Nat, but if i don't write it down, how can we remember this?

day three - Plan A, Plan B, and finally Plan C

we started Day three shopping. We were in the direction of the Vatican and after what seemed like days and days of shopping (Nat's idea of shopping is to go into each and every store and look at each and every crack and corner in there!) on the five blocks to get to the Vatican, we were finally there! We took in the sights and views and i must say it was pretty great. The columns were just breath-taking. We first went into a free church (I think it was the St. Peter's Basilica in the Piazza San Pietro) and that was pretty cool. Not sure how they perserve it so well but they do. Everything in there is made from marble, gold and bronze. I think if you ask Natacha what her highlight of that church is she would reply that it was the unpeeled banana that someone stepped on. Her laughing and snorting immediately suggested to us that it was time to leave the repectful church. Our timing couldn't be better as we left the church. I have to first tell you, Nat and I like to save money on certain things (rather useless, unmeaningful things in other people's eye). We'd rather, or should i say I'd rather spend 118 euros on rubber boots! At least Nat and I appreciate each other's cheapness in this respect and joined a tour group. So again I must explain. What i meant by "joining" is that we walked when the tour group walked and stopped when the tour group stopped and just pretended to blend in meanwhile Nat was evesdropping on the tour guide's explainations in French and was paraphasing for my sake in English. What an educational experience! I learned quite a few facts, at the time, but now those facts have escaped me... We then went on to visit the Sistine Chapel. Little did we know, it was smack-dab in the middle of the Vatican Museum; a Museum that we thought we could by-pass on this trip. We quickly learned that we had to walk through this Museum before getting to our destination and a little tid-bit Nat got from a patient at a recent doctor's office was that this Museum is about 4 hours long and the only way out is that you go through the whole entire Museum! We attempted to get in, without paying, and just go see Michelangelo's work and leave. So plan A was follow the large highschool fieldtrip crowd that was just going in at the same time as us. We ended up in this Astronomy tour, a tour we didn't want to go on and a waste of 15 minutes. Then we went onto plan B and plan B only takes people with balls (and did i mention people with no shame?!?!) to do and that is just walk right pass security and the turn stalls. Obviously plan B failed miserably. In the end we had to resort to Plan C and that is that we paid the damn admission's fee of 13 euros and walked the whole damn Museum! Mind you, now that it's been days away from that long day, it was worth it! oh yeah, did i mention that we "joined" a tour group there as well? Luckily for me it was in English this time.

day one and two - so the reggio tour begins

For the record, i'm not a blogger. I thought it would be fun to possibly start a "secret" blog as my memory is slowing dying, each day i grow older. This is supposed to be purely for myself when i'm old and gray and therefore if you have the honour of being invited to read, please enjoy my memory of this beautiful place we call Europe.

i met Nat at the airport on Tuesday, November 24, 2009. The trip started with a "good-bye, see you soon" to James. We had 45 minutes (our flight was at 8:50pm) to make it through security and get to our terminal. We found our seats on the airplane and took our places for 9 hours. Luckily, the third passenger had extra long legs and asked to be moved so the next 9 hours, Nat and I shared the three seater. After two movies (Time Traveller's wife and The Ugly Truth - note, both these two movies sucked!) and a couple decent naps we arrive in Heathrow, London airport. What an amazing airport! The escalators won top prize!

we filled our tummies with a croissant (for Nat) and soup (for me), then waited for our plane to be ready to take us to Rome. We arrived in Rome and immediately started to seek a way to our hotel. Now, let me tell you, Nat and I are allergic to carrying our bags as they are extremely heavy. I swear I purposely packed the least amount of clothes as i didn't mind "recycling" my outfits - as simple as i am. But anyhow, carry my 25 (24.3 pounds to be exact!) pound suitcase and Nat's 20 pound suitcase after a long flight (even if it was a short one!) was not our ideal plan. So it began - our hunt for the cheapest way- without needing to carrying our own luggage. The first Italian man stopped us and asked if we wanted a lift to our hotel; i'm sure we were easy targets for business as our faces were so sad looking as we lugged our suitcases down the hallway from the baggage claim (it must have only been 500 metres but 500 metres too much for me!). 80 euros was his bargin price. WTF?!?! That's 80 euros too much, were we going to get a personal chaffeur as well at that price?!?! So we walked away because there's no way "these" Italians were going to take our shopping money so easily. He came back and suggested that we can go with him in his van for 40 euros instead. Even though that was still a bit pricey, we paid the price to live in comfort.
Our hotel, Twenty-One near the Vatican, was awesome! Very impressive. The room was quite large for an European room and the bathroom - wow! Of course pictures were taken and once i figure out how to post those, i will. We parked our suitcases and went back down to have our first Roman meal. Mistakenly we chose this place across the street from our hotel. It was supposed to be a pizzeria but i swear it was cardboard with misleading toppings for 30 euros!
After our meal, we called it a night.