It wasn't until Nicole surprised me with a necklace that she'd brought along from South Africa that I remembered that it was in fact Christmas morning. Fate had a Christmas gift for me too in the form of working wifi! I used it to upload a few more photographs and to make a few Skype calls to wish everyone I'd left at home a Merry Christmas.
There were lots of hugs and well wishes between all of us about the hotel this morning, and Joey had surprised us by decorating the coach with tinsel and Christmas stockings. Jen gave us each little goodie bags filled with chocolates, little perfume vials from Nice and little Pinocchio keychains from Rome, which was a really nice surprise.
We also exchanged out Secret Santa gifts on the bus. I've been given a pot coaster (can't remember what they're called but you put them between your table and a hot pot to protect the table) in the shape of the Eiffel Tower, which was great because I never had the time to buy myself anything Paris. I still don't know who gave it to me, but I love it! Nicole, very amusingly, was given the CD of the Italian singer that had been all over her that night in Florence. Well, I found it far more funny than she did. She'll always have a piece of him with her now!
For the remainder of the morning, we got to watch a movie called Step Brothers with Will Ferrel in it, which was quite funny. There is a short bit in the middle that takes place over Christmas time, and that's about as festive as the film got. Jen says she tried to download a Christmas movie, but her computer is being "grinchy."
The service station we stopped at was also being grinchy because it didn't have any wifi for me. #SadFace. It did have a Burger King, though, so Nicole and I got to try that for the first time ever in the form of a very unconventional Christmas lunch. There were little christmasy cardboard crowns about with the Burger King logo on it, so I donned one during lunch to give it an air of festivity.
On the bus ride after lunch, we played a game called Gondola of Love to get into the mood for Venice. Basically, two people on the bus were secretly chosen as the the bachelor and bachelorette that would be competed for. They would write down questions that the three people Jen had picked would creatively answer, then winners from both genders would be chosen for the Gondola of Love!
Letters to Juliet was the next movie that we watched, whileI spent the time catching up my blogging. Jen said we'd had a "fart movie" for the boys, so we'd have a romantic movie for the girls. Before reaching Venice, we had another stop at an old Italian village that is still surrounded by Medieval walls. It was very misty there, so there wasn't much view over the lake, but they had festively decorated it with lights and a pretty Christmas tree.
Since it was Christmas Day, there wasn't much open, but we did find a busy little restaurant selling gelato at the heart of the town. I spent a good 10 minutes there queuing for a toilet because the establishment only had one for men and women to share. After that, I hunted Nicole and Kaylee down, who were busy checking out the lake. Kaylee threw some of her ice cream cone to the ducks to get them into the photograph after she'd chased them away when she'd felt the temperature of the water.
Nicole wasn't really in much mood to look around. She'd seen a shop selling shoes that was open and really wanted to go check it out, to the point where it seemed that she might get moody if she didn't. We headed over there and she found a cute pair of heels at half price to replace the pair that she'd damaged that night in Nice. She was in a pretty good mood again after that!
After that, we headed straight to the hotel. There was only one elevator that could only take two people and their bags at a time, so we spent a lot of time queuing for it. Our bags are far too bulky and heavy to easily carry up the stairs the way that people with rucksack bags are so easily able to do.
Our rooms were a big disappointment. Besides being dusty, causing me to sneeze constantly while I was in them, the bathroom is stupidly organised. It turns out that our toilet was actually inside our shower for some random reason. It is really the dumbest arrangement that I've ever seen.
The worst thing about the hotel, however, has been that the wifi had to be paid for and wasn't free. That set me back R95 just for my iPad. I'd have to pay again if I wanted to connect my cellphone as well. Then, my iPad threatened not to connect at all. After an hour of me struggling with it, I gave up and threatened to cry myself to sleep. Just as someone offered to buy my unique password from me, it finally connected and I was able to spend the rest of the evening uploading blogs and photos.
Due to the unreasonably high expense of the wifi, I intended to use as much of the data up as I could. I ran all of my application updates, loaded all of my photographs onto dropbox, and intended to make a skype call - with video, if I could manage it! I'm not sure why the crappiest hotels we have stayed at are the ones that also charge you for wifi. Our hotel in Germany will also be charging us for wifi, so that has me kinda worried...
Dinner wasn't too bad at least, consisting of penne Napolitano, chicken and chips, and creme caramel. It just wasn't very Christmasy, if that makes sense? It's funny, ever since we have been in Europe, it has felt so much like the festive season, but on Christmas Day itself, it has felt like any other day we've had here.
After dinner, I was happy to head straight to my bedroom to use up my wifi, while everyone else went off to play Battle of the Sexes with another Contiki group that was staying at our hotel. Nicole and I watched David Copperfield on tv for a while, which had been dubbed into Italian. Before long, though, Nicole opted to go to sleep instead. I stayed up to max out my expensive wifi, sneezing and still coughing all the way, but eventually gave up and went to bed as well. We had a big day in Venice ahead of us.
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