Journal 37 Friday: Today was pretty relaxing for the most part. We got up at 6am, like we did the last couple days and got ready to leave the hostel as soon as we could. The other people that we were sharing the room with smelled reallllly bad; it was nice to get out to the hallway. Chris and I showered and got ready, the other guy we had come to hostel with left right away to see about catching the earliest train that he could. So we checked out, got our one-night hostel membership card, and left. It was still 15minutes before breakfast was being served (at 7:15), and we didn't want to wait. We walked in the dark to the Metro station, laughing about how we were lucky we found the ONE hostel in Milan; had it not been for the internet cafe we would have been sleeping on the streets. Once down in the Metro tunnels we tried to use the machines to buy tickets, but they were all broken. We walked up to the guy and said "Tickets?" and he pointed to the lady at the snack bar. So we walked over there, and asked the same thing, she nodded, we gave her one Euro, and she gave us a ticket. The train ride was nice, Chris slept about half of it. I woke him up a few times when we were going through the hills and passing tons of little houses on the hillside. Once we got into Switzerland we passed a bunch of lakes and snow-capped mountains. We arrived at the Lugano station around 10:30 or so; a full three hours before Cristina was expecting us. So we tried calling her. Unfortunately my phone seems to be banned from calling right now; I have no idea why. So we tried the pay phone. We must have been standing there for a good 20minutes trying to figure out how to use this damn thing. Every country in Europe has a different kind of pay phone, it sucks. Well, they gave some sort of instructions in Italian and I don't know about you but I'm a little rusty from those days when I never studied Italian - so we had no idea what it was saying. Aparently it got through to Cristina's voicemail because later that day she told us she had two messages; one of us laughing and talking about how we couldn't understand the machine, and the other one was us saying "we're not sure if this is working, but we're here early, and we'll try again later". So after that Chris and I walked down to the downtown area. We wandered around the shops and were trying to figure out what the exchange rate was from Dollars to Swiss Francs; because we were looking at the prices in the window and everything seemed really high. We stoppe at the lake and sat, ate, and fed the birds. We were trying to get a huge group of birds so Chris could run through them and scare them all. After sitting there for a while we walked around a bit more, and then headed back toward the station. We took a tram up the hill since we didn't feel like walking it with our packs on. It cost us 1.60Euros since we had no Francs with us. The guy ripped us off when he shortchanged us in Francs, oh well, it was only about 30cents I guess, and bad things happen to bad people. We waited around the station for about an hour because we were still early and our scheduled train hadn't arrived yet. At 1:00pm we still couldn't find Cristina so we tried our luck at the phone once more. This time it worked, Cristina picked up; she said she was just at the station and didn't see us. She told us where to tell the cab driver to take us, so we went to withdraw money. Twenty Francs is about $17, and the cab ride was 14Francs - I paid, because that was pretty cheap considering that we had no idea where we were going. The driver dropped us off at the building next to to the one we needed though - Yay for Switzerland, land of dishonest locals, haha. Cristina came out and met us, then showed us to her building. Chris and I sat and chilled a bit on the patio while she got ready to go back to town, and finished what she was doing around her dorm room. She was ready so we wandered back to town talking about where we had been, and also how someone from California ends up traveling with someone from Florida. Once in town Cristina showed us the different shops and stuff. She needed to buy groceries but her card didn't want to work. Chris tried to buy to a jacket but his card didn't want to work either; though he was able to withdraw money and just pay for it that way. We walked around to a bunch of different shops. I felt bad because I thought Cristina would be getting bored doing that, but she said it was interesting shopping for guys with guys. We bought pizza, which wasn't very good but I liked it more than the pizza I had in Rome. This pizza was a little softer where as Rome was really crisp, almost like a cracker. After that we headed back to her place to some things around there. We checked email and stuff in her computer lab/common room with WiFi place. I realized I didn't have my WiFi card, or my home cell phone. I freaked out for about five minutes because if I lost my cell phone, then I've lost about 150 numbers or more. I realized that I probably left it in London with my Mom, if that's the case then she brought it home. The reality is that I probably actually left it in the bag I checked in London to pick up when I return there on Friday. After doing all that it was time to go and get dinner. We went to a little restaurant down the street to eat. The food was good, I had the Pasta all'aribiata (spicy sauce) which was pretty good. I'm still craving reeallllllyyy spicy food though, it's been forever since I had any. We all sat and joked and talked about different things. I ordered a Strawberry Shake for desert, but it seemed more like foamy strawberry milk, oh well. After we ate we walked to the School Cristina goes to and then to the gas station near it; that's where you go at night when you need food I guess. Cristina bought a few things and Chris bought food for breakfast. We then walked back Cristina's dorm and just chilled around there til it was time to go to sleep. Chris as I were out by midnight, actually he was pretty much asleep by 11. I talked to Mila, Cristina's suitemate, for a bit about where I was from and where she was from, etc. She's from Portland, and I mentioned I had friends there; so we talked about that. We again talked about why a Californian and Floridian were traveling together.
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