Roma.
When in Rome…It has to be uttered at least 12 times a day. This is a city so grande, so epic, so very very rich. Ariane and I have dove (dived?) in head first and are loving it to pieces.

We arrived last night after a rather fun 2 days and 2 nights on ferrys and trains, Limnos— Athens—Patras—Bari—Roma, during which we said an almost teary goodbye to Liv and Pop which was remedied by the realisation that we are meeting up with them multiple times in the coming weeks if all goes to plan. We also made many a friend on the ferry to Italy, a really sweet dutch couple, a young swedish pair, some funny turkish lads and Giorgia and Geoffrey from England, they are the loveliest and have even invited us all to stay with them in Hastings in November. We all had a jolly good time on he ferry, braving the deck passage with the comfort of duty-free wine and ouzo, which I am still not 100% fond of yet, that licourice essence is still an iffy one for me. Another thing I am not going to miss about Greece is the bloody plumbing, I was so over the whole not-being-able-the flush-toilet-paper-down-the-toilet business, so uncool. It was nice having a big group travelling together for the day, finding buses and getting to the train station, trying to ignore crazy raving loony italian lady screaming "SONO MALEEEE! MOLTO MALLEEEEE!" even though she was clearly not that povo as she was wearing clean clothes, a gold watch, lipstick and wedges and didn't seem to be suffering in any way besides her obvious issue with us sitting in the middle of the park with our turd-like pile of backpacks, food and luggage. We sat there for hours and hours, in the hot hot rays, eating bread and halva and peaches, waiting for our stupid train that we were forced to get as the 1 early one was full.

To make matters more trying, I forked out far too many euros to send a package home full of things I just don't need to be lugging round no more, and almost hit disaster town when I realised, one the way back from Poste Italiane, that I had put the wrong address on the box…God those few moments of pure "s***s***s***OHMYGODIAMANOBHEAD" were terrifying, but I managed to run back and change it, just 20 minutes before the collection which was just in the nick of time. I did pretty well understanding the postal lady working there, she was so sweet and jolly and plump like a reall Italian Mamma should be, you know what I mean. I havent been too good with the actual speaking of the Italian, but my comprehension has been much better than expected and useful at times. I could listen to the language all day long, it is like a river of my favourite songs.