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22/23 September

Where to begin? Today was a day of travelling. It was also a day of bizarre mishaps. After a seven hour flight over the Atlantic, my travel partner, Melissa and I landed in grand old Amsterdam. As we went through customs, I continued to make the alarm go off. After three tries of removing various metal objects, I was pulled aside for a pat down. Well, it was more of a rub down. I swear, that was no search, that was a sensual massage. He didn't even make me dinner or offer me a cigarette. Anyhow, we got on the plane to Italy. When we arrived we were guided onto a bus and taken to the baggage claim, where we were supposed to meet our other travel partner, Becca. However, Becca was not there! Long story short, we spent two hours searching for Becca until we finally found her, just as we were about to give up. So with Becca newly added to the party, we took our shuttle to our hotel, the Hotel Navono, but alas there was trouble there too! For some reason my reservation for us three never got confirmed. So we had to travel through the incredibly dodgy alleyways to find an incredibly dodgy hotel. And now, here we are! Sore, tired, and sweaty. But hey, that's what adventure is all about!

Postscript. I woke up at 3AM to the sound of Italian bickering and glasses breaking outside our window, so I decided to go out into the foyer and draw in my journal since trying to do so before I went to bed proved difficult. Unfortunately, I messed up the skin tone on the drawing terribly so I tried to wipe it away and ended up just scraping off a layer of the homemade paper. So excuse the apparent skin defect/scarring this caricature seems to have.