Summer holidays are over, but we did make the most of it with a trip to Italy. This was no easy feat.
My wife is Chinese so she needed a visa, but the visa website for italy 'vfsglobal' is, without exaggeration, the single worst website I've ever had the misfortune to experience. It's significantly worse than a crappy site made by your dad in the early days of the internet, and so we simply couldn't get the visa.
Not by lack of documentation or money or being denied entry, but simply by pure fact that no matter what device, what wifi, vpn settings or anything else we used, it is just a completely broken website, notoriously so, in which we could just barely log in 1/10th of the time. I'm getting angry just thinking back to it.
So what could we do? We had to do something a bit frowned upon and instead go to Spain. Our hearts were set on Italy so we didn't want to just go Spain, so we simply went to barcelona for a short stay and then a cheap flight over to Italy. This process was extraordinarily simple by comparison, but at this point we were doing extreme last minute travel.
Like, by the time we got the visa done we were departing in 3 days, no hotels or flights booked at this point because we were so unsure that the visa application would be successful. But it was!
So we worked our asses off making a very vague plan, a couple of hotels to get us started and headed out.
I did have a plan to go to the UK as part of the trip too, but that visa process is an entirely different one and possibly even more complicated, and expensive.
Italy
To make our plans even worse, the flight from Spain was disastrous to the point that, long story short, we ended up in FLORENCE instead of Rome. Yeah, we were overbooked and the next flight wasn't until the next day. All tickets for entry to places wasted, non-refundable. Airbnb money in the trash. We lost HUNDREDS of euros to this crappy, snide, corrupt-yet-legal practice.
We did get 500 euros compensation in... relatively short time which I think made us break even, so ultimately we only lost about 3 hours of time to stress.
When we landed in Florence, we were met with a fairly uncomfortable sight, close to midnight, we arrived at the train station and was met by large groups of African migrants, lingering around with their hoods up and hands in their pockets, loitering in the dead of night.
I'm not gonna lie this was not only scary that I had to protect myself and my wife, but also gargantuanly disappointing, to see Florence in this state, with trash covering the floor as far as the eye could see, and a bunch of young men looking about ready to rob you or worse.
Naturally, my doom-mongering brain later started reading up to find out if I screwed up BIG time by coming here, and there is a lot of news and complains about this, especially in only the last few months, where Florence has been flooded with migrants, and crime has skyrocketed in the city. Locals saying they feel they're in an open air prison and their lovely historical town destroyed.
I felt pretty miserable that night.
The morning came, and to my relief the previous night felt almost like a passing dream. The outside world had transformed into, well, beautiful Florence! And, the further we got from the train station, the more beautiful it became.
It seems in the end, the train station is the notorious hang out place, likely because it contains the only 24 hour McDonalds, and so we quickly forgot this ordeal and was completely taken in by the gorgeous architecture, the Italian accent, the history, the art. All the stuff you'd expect.
Since we arrived here literally at the last minute, we had NO plan, NO tickets for anything such as seeing Michelangelo, and no real knowledge of what to do or eat.
Kinda fun! From this point it worked out fairly smooth. We just booked hotels whenever we felt like it depending on where we were, and all the food was great wherever we landed.
One goal we did have in mind for Florence was to buy our wedding rings. We were married months ago, but we have no intention of a wedding. I lack family and friends while my wife has a massive family, so it would be very strange with 300 on one side, and me pretty much alone on the other. Plus, neither of us like the idea of it. The traditional Chinese wedding, as I've personally experienced is... challenging.
For introverts like us, it's a nightmare to even think about. So instead, we use that money on ourselves and screw other people's wishes hah.
So yeah, just buy the rings and wear ourselves. Florence is a fantastic place for this. There is a famous bridge with fairly overpriced gold called Ponte Vecchio, and a healthy spattering of jewelry shops in surrounding areas that would offer a better price and perhaps more custom content.
But we didn't want anything fancy. We needed something that would go with any style over any period of time, so a plain platinum or white gold band was ideal. We went with white gold in the end. Although I prefer Platinum because it's just harder material, longer lasting, more scratch proof - when it does scratch, it's very difficult if not impossible to get rid of it. White gold scratches if you sneeze on it too heavily, but it can fairly easily be buffed up and polished back to new.
So here's mine!
Still not used to how it looks on my hand, but I like spinning it around.
I'm well aware of my tendency to ramble for thousands of words, so I'll leave it like that as a kind of opening blog. Italy was incredibly enriching for me and I can tell I'm gonna have a hard time expressing it via text. But, I'll give it a shot!
A summary of unfortunate events
- Italian visa website completely broken
- Crooked Vueling Airlines overbooked us and redirected us to Florence instead of Rome
- Intimidated by hundreds of African migrants upon arrival
Still worth it?
150% yes!
Dear @mobbs !
I wonder what kind of job a British man has and lives in China after marrying a Chinese woman!
People like me who live in China's neighboring countries speculate that the current economic collapse of China will lead to war.
I am a music teacher for students preparing to go to the USA!
I think it's mostly just an economic struggle more than a collapse. I do expect, eventually, we will see a rise in protests as banks and real estate start to struggle/die, but China is in a pretty strong 'too big to fail' position on the world stage.
Also given there's only one party, even if the current leader gets overthrown, it will only be by more people from the same party. End result will be almost no change lol
It's interesting that many of China's upper class and wealthy families send their children to study in the United States!😃
Yes and any product that tried to market themselves as 'legitimate' use foreign faces in their advertisements... heh
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Sounds familiar. We bought airplane tickets for our mothers, flew out of town and got married (at church!) in Las Vegas. Saved a lot of money and were able to buy a house before our first child was born.
Your description of the Florence train station is depressing, but it's wonderful to read about your travel adventures, @mobbs.🦋
Back in the days when that was a thing haha! So nice! We actually considered a Las Vegas thing until we realised just getting there would be extortionate. My first USA trip is gonna be a long one, a month or more including Las Vegas!
Most major train stations in Europe, according to an Italian who talked about it to us! But yeah it was only brief, all part of the adventure =D
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That's unfortunate with that website. But it seems like you had a wonderful time in Italy which is most important (except for the start of the trip)....Hope you are doing well now tho...
Yeah I mean, unfortunate events keep things interesting. We actually look back fondly on the disaster at the airport, the experience was kinda unique and fun because we're a cool team together =D
I bet you are. Have lovely time where ever you are. 🤗