If you’ve ever had to be humiliated by standing outside in the rain while holding a baby seat as you try not to look like an idiot, you’ll know that it is not a pleasant experience. When this happened to me, I thought that this would be the worst thing that happened on my trip. That wasn’t true, but it seemed like it at the time. The actual worst part was the cat. Or maybe the outlets. Actually, it was probably the insomnia I received from all this trouble.
I don’t remember what time it was when I woke up, but it must’ve been pretty early because the plane was still flying. I sat in my seat for a long time until the plane landed. Since everyone walks at the pace of a rotten turnip, I went ahead to baggage claims. It turns out that I was supposed to go to flight connections, so I got lost for a bit. We had to go through security again for some reason, and we got on a three hour flight to Milan.
If you’ve ever been on a plane before, you’ll know that the middle seat is the worst seat because you can not enjoy the window. Nor can you enjoy the ability the be closest to the aisle. Nobody likes the middle seat, and that’s a fact. I say this so you can understand why I was so annoyed having to sit in the very back of the plane between two strangers. Sitting with random people is bad enough on its own, but sitting between them is practically unbearable. You can barely move around without touching anyone, and you have to sleep with your head resting on the seat in front of you. There was no point in sleeping anyway, as I kept waking up randomly.
After I left that horrid plane ride, everyone stood near the entrance as if they were looking for someone. They were looking for someone. The someone they were looking for were some people I didn’t know. Everyone started hugging and saying hello to each other while I stood in a corner and pretended to care. The men left as soon as they came, and took Khoi’s grandmother along with them to who knows where. Khoi’s father had to rent a car, so we stood around for half an hour, because apparently renting a car takes a very long time. Khoi took this opportunity to be annoying and try to steal my luggage. After a long while, we finally went up to the garage to obtain our car. We got lost. I wasn’t too surprised. A lot of walking around later, we went back to the car rental place to ask for directions. There was more walking about after that.
We drove through the busy streets of Milan, with a honking cars and pedestrians traversing the roads. After all my relatives hyping up the beauty of Italy, I was pretty unimpressed, but I figured things would look nicer after we left the city. I asked where we were going, and Khoi’s father said a hotel. The car halted at the hotel, and I was a little confused because the hotel seemed to be behind us. Khoi’s father and Khoi went to check in, and the rest of us stayed in the car. I was playing on my phone when Vien asked me if she could play it. No is what I thought, but yes is what I said. She played it to the point where the phone nearly died, and I took it back from her before that could happen. There was a lot more waiting until Khoi’s father came back and told us to go move our luggage to our rooms. This is when I learned that we were not staying in a hotel. Upon entering the building, I saw a flight of stairs and and an elevator. Nothing else. The elevator was tiny, and by tiny I mean only about three people could squeeze in with their luggage. Once I got out of the elevator, it became apparent that the “hotel” was just a bunch of guest rooms you could rent for a night. I guess that description makes it sound like a hotel, but trust me, it’s not. Think of like a motel, but it’s in a tall building and the rooms are only on a single floor. Our room had two beds, a closet, and a table with a small TV on it. I wasn’t too concerned about the room at the moment; I was more focused on trying to find an outlet. There were a few outlets, but they didn’t have the correct holes that I could use. I gave up on my room and started snooping around in the second room we had gotten. The same results as the first. Then Khoi informed me that I needed an adapter to use the outlets in Italy. I guess it never occurred to me that a different country would use different outlets. I used Khoi’s adapter to charge my phone and Switch.
Khoi’s father was picking up Angel, who is a cousin of mine that I didn’t know existed until about two years ago. She doesn’t think too highly of me, so I figured I should ignore her. Her family would be the ones staying in the second room. I ended up playing my Switch in Angel’s room because the Wifi at the “hotel” couldn’t reach my room. Out of the kindness of my heart, I let Khoi and Vien play with me on my Switch. They were both terrible though, so things got repetitive pretty quick. I was then forced to take a shower by my grandmother. Something thing I forgot to mention is that every guest at the “hotel” shared the same shower and bathroom. I wasn’t sure if I should be annoyed by that or not, so I decided to be annoyed by it. After a hot shower, I left the bathroom only to find a grey cat walking around, which I assumed to belong to the owner of the “hotel”. Everyone crowded around it and petted it a bit until the got bored. Little did I know, however, the cat was evil and was plotting my destruction.
At about nine or ten, my grandmother made us go to bed. Angel’s flight had been delayed, so no one had come back yet. Unlike the previous two nights, I found it pretty easy to fall asleep. And then disaster happened. At about eleven or twelve, I was awoken by a lot of talking and some blinding lights. I automatically assumed it was morning, and tried to get a little bit more sleep before I was forced to leave the bed. It was not actually morning. What really happened was that the cat snuck into our room. Khoi, for whatever reason, thought there was a person entering the room, and woke everyone up, including me. I was pretty annoyed that my sleep was interrupted, and retreated back under the covers. But I couldn’t fall asleep. I don’t know why. I wasn’t tired at all. A long time passed. It felt like an eternity until I decided to check what time it was. It was two in the morning. I tried to go back to sleep. I couldn’t the time was now three in the morning. I was beginning to think that I was going to stay awake until morning. This didn’t happen, because somehow, I miraculously passed out a short time after three. I don’t know how, but I’m grateful.