Molto Bella

A few years ago, while I was still a young, naive student in Swansea, my friends and I decided to go on a trip during the Easter holidays. And so we booked ourselves for a trip around Italy, starting from Venice and ending at Rome, where we would fly to Paris. Sounds glamorous, no? Very jet-setter.
So not.
We were students. So, no 5-star hotels for us. We got to revel in the luxury of youth hostels. [The one in Venice was gorgeous! Much better than some of the so-called hotels that I've stayed in.]
But the trip was fantastic. Me + gelato in practically every flavour = an extremely happy me. And pasta. Yum. Oh, and the scenery, the buildings, the history and all that was also very nice, of course.
Venice was much better than I ever dreamed it would be. I loved going around in the water taxis. Florence was beautiful. Milan was a shopaholic's [with cash to spare] dream come true. And Rome... well Rome was...
On our way to the Vatican, we were mobbed by gypsies. It was a harrowing 5 minutes. While we were waiting in the long line to enter the Vatican, one of my friends discovered that his wallet was missing. He'd been pickpocketed. So, we didn't get off to a very good start in Rome.
When we got back to the room, another friend discovered that her credit card was missing. So, off we went to report it. [Incidentally, whoever got hold of her credit card had gone on a little spree, as we later found out.]
After those 2 incidents, we were kind of glad to be flying off to Paris [sad as I was to leave the gelato and pasta]. My two [girl] friends and I were wandering around the shops inside the airport [after checking in, of course], when they got stopped. I was walking behind them and was surprised to see them getting stopped by two female security officers. I went up to them to see what was going on, and when they found out I was with my friends, they asked me to come along.
Ah, we were so special. Such V.I.P. treatment. They led us to a room, where they brushed this scanner thing over our clothes to test for... bomb residue. Hmm... apparently we were potential TOOOOOT. I'm not going to say that dreaded 'T' word, so I'll replace it with just TOOOOOT.
Why wasn't I initially stopped? Besides the fact that I was walking slightly behind the other two? Because I don't wear the headscarves the other two were.
This story illustrates that I wouldn't make a very good TOOOOOT as I walked towards the security women, instead off running off in the other direction.
Anyway, it was an interesting experience, to say the least. We couldn't wait to get to Paris after that.