Our flight from Paris to Rome was scheduled to leave at 9:30 am so Colleen and I figured that if we left our hostel by 7:00 am we’d have plenty of time to get there. Oh, how wrong we were! Apparently the airport was an hour and a half away from Paris. So, not knowing this, we planned to take the metro at 7 to the spot where a shuttle would take us to the airport. Well, part of the metro was shut down and we had to take the time to figure out a new way of how to get to the shuttle station. Once we finally got there, we had missed our shuttle and the next one wasn’t leaving for another 30 minutes, which would’ve made us late. The only way we were going to make our flight was to take a cab.
Well, this cab took us an hour and 20 minutes to get to the airport, and cost us a whopping 147 euros. We were running around the airport trying to find an ATM to get money out for the cab. When we finally paid and were on our way, it was 9:00 am. Turns out, we weren’t even in the right terminal and had to spring across the parking lot to terminal 2. By the time we got there it was about 9:05 or so. The plane wasn’t actually leaving until 9:30 so we were hoping we’d still be able to make it. Well, we would’ve made it had we not missed the time to check our bags. We were 15 minutes late to check them, so the lady at customer service called her supervisor to see if we could still put them on the plane. No luck. We had to pay 100 euros each to change our flight to the next one…at 8:45 pm! Colleen and I waited out the 12 lonesome hours in this tiny airport by watching movies on her laptop. Even that didn’t make the time go by any faster.
8:45 finally rolled around and we boarded the plane and landed in Rome on schedule. We had no idea what time the last train left the train station to Orvieto, so we took a shuttle to the train station, on which I was a blubbering mess because of how terrible the trip had turned out. It was about 11:00-11:30 pm by this point. Much to our dismay, the next train to Orvieto would be leaving at 5:58 am. We had absolutely no money because of our cab fee and had no idea what to do. We couldn’t get a hotel or hostel, but apparently the airport closes at 2:00 am for cleaning, so we couldn’t stay there either. Colleen and I decided to wait it out until we got kicked out, and when that happened, we would just sit outside.
It was freezing and miserable. We were running on 3 hours of sleep in 48 hours. By the time it was 2:15, no one had kicked us out yet, but we hadn’t seen a cop in a while and didn’t want to risk it. We decided to hide out downstairs on the bottom level to get out of the wind and try to find some shelter. We found a tiny little pizza slice-sized corner where we stashed our suitcases and backpacks, and posted up for the night. We were too scared to fall asleep so we just sat there reading, listening to music and watching movies. As easy as it sounds, it was hardly that.
Luckily, we did end up seeing a policeman/security guard who definitely saw us too, but he never said anything. We also made friends with a few janitors, so that comforted us. FINALLY it was 5:00 am so we got a croissant, bought our tickets, and boarded the train to Orvieto. The two of us were delirious by this point. We got to Orvieto, but the little trolley that takes you up the hill to the actual city of Orvieto wasn’t open yet. Right then a bus pulled up and we were able to take it up the hill, pretty close to our apartment. As soon as we got home we got something to eat and went to sleep until 5:30 pm when my Dad called, asking if we were okay.
Thank God nothing bad had happened to us and we got home safely. So many things could’ve gone wrong, but I am thanking my lucky (if you can call them that) stars that not many things did. I guess everyone who goes to Europe needs to come home with some horror story of their foreign travels...
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