My Nightmare

It was 6:30 A.M. the morning after a long night out and I was exhausted but quickly walking to the Santa Maria Novella train station to catch a 7:20 A.M. train into Cinque Terre, our destination for the weekend. We arrive at the train station, look up our train gate, and with a lot of time to kill head to McDonalds.
I am quickly irritated because I was craving a bacon egg and cheese biscuit and they didn’t have it on the menu. So I retreat to the train gate with my Egg Mcmuffin and sit on the bench. I notice the train hasn’t arrived as I eat what I thought was an Egg Mcmuffin but turned out to have some kind of mysterious meat, lettuce, sauce combination—I was hungry enough to gulp it down anyway.
The time for the train departure passes and we realize it is not coming. Fuming, I look at the train departure board to find no more direct trains; we must go to Pisa and wait for 3 hours, then La Spezia, then Cinque Terre. We caught the first train to Pisa an hour and a half later and sat at our second McDonalds at the Pisa train station. Even more exhausted now, I lay down on the table and woke up 3 hours later to my friends saying its time to go. We made it on the train only to sit next to a homeless crazy man singing songs in Italian and thoroughly creeping us out. Finally arriving in La Spezia a few hours later, we took our last train into Cinque Terre, I am parched and wishing I stayed in bed this morning.
That wish was gone when I finally caught the view of this place, and I realized what travelling is all about. I could have easily given up, gone back to Florence and moped. Or I could have planned better, perhaps looking at the train schedule early that morning to ensure there were no changes. I believe that in situations like these you either laugh, or you’ll cry. With laughter and slightly bitter but upbeat sarcasm I got through the day, and as soon as I was surrounded with crystal clear waters and endless mountain tops my bitterness quickly disappeared into serenity.