Europe Day 9

Breakfast on the first morning in Rome was quite nice. There was a selection of cereal for those who would choose to eat healthy, and for me there was a selection of meats, cheeses and chocolate croissants and other pastries. I ate one of each thing, tried not to be to voluminous with my breakfast because I'm currently not exercising at all. The orange juice looked fresh pressed but when I tried it I could tell it had been moderately adulterated like so much Chicago heroin. I've always worried whether or not my opinions on the weblog (basically my journal) would offend people, and I'd find it quite funny if some heroin dealer got on here and started an argument like "hey man our shit is 85% who the hell are you to judge" and I can't say I've ever tried heroin or any other street drug for that matter, so I really couldn't honestly judge. I guess if that actually happened, we'd have conclusive proof that there is at least one person who doesn't find me funny. Then again this isn't an advertised public weblog, and I don't plan to make it one, so the chances of that happening are very unlikely. Maybe the two people in Russia who keep reading this thing supply the heroin to most of Chicago, and when they read this the say "what the hell, they're chopping our shit out there, get on the wire" but I would think that to be equally unlikely.

For the day, we decided to do exactly what my Romanian friend suggested we not do. My Dad suggested, and everyone agreed, we should take the subway from one attraction to the next. I agreed because this is a vacation where most people around me are only interested in seeing historic monuments, or at least in covering those first, and this way I am saved of a lot of walking. The train took a long time to come, but it was Sunday, and it was Europe.

When we actually arrived in Rome, the story changed completely. I thought we were going to walk briskly from one thing to the subway to the next thing to the subway to the next thing. I didn't know everyone wanted to go INTO the Vatican (on Sunday, with loads and loads of people there, and we didn't actually end up being allowed to enter) and then INTO the Coliseum (50 minutes in line for 30 minutes of sightseeing inside), so by the time I got to the Roman bathhouses (and we didn't take a tour guide so I had no idea what anything was about) I was completely fed up with the whole sightseeing aspect of the day. I basically hate standing in line or having to wait unnecessary amounts of time by choice for things, I just feel that life is too short. If I were doing this my way, I would have bought us advance tickets to be able to bypass all these bullshit lines and I would have found out when the Vatican was freely open to the public, but I'm not in charge of all this stuff and I'm not interested in seeing more than half of it. This dated back to the last family vacation I went on in Las Vegas where everyone desperately wanted to sign up for a 6 hour bus ride (one way, 12 hours total bussing on the day) for a 1-hour visit to the Grand Canyon. I wanted to see the Grand Canyon, but I wasn't so desperate that I'd murder a whole day that could be spent relaxing or seeing a show or basically doing any other fucking thing, being crammed into a bus driving through Nevada and then Arizona, I think.

I want to see the Sistine Chapel, but only the Sistine chapel, not all of the Vatican. If it means having to go and see all of it, and if it means fighting off ridiculous crowds of tourists, and if it means having to do a whole second day of sightseeing, I'd rather opt out, and that's what I did. Tomorrow, I'm going to wake up whenever the hell I wake up, I'm going to go into Rome and walk around for a bit and eat something, maybe two or three hours tops, then go back to the hotel. There's no sense in ruining everyone else's vacation by complaining in line. I snapped at my parents again today, first my Dad thought he could take a short-cut through some other street to get us to the subway faster, then we got lost at a five-point intersection and my mom randomly suggests without looking at the map at all that some road she points to "should" get us to the subway, and I yell out "There is no 'should'!" People shouldn't guess things at random like that, you either know where you're going because you've read the map, or you haven't read the map so you know nothing. It's something to which I will have to acclimate myself, because in reality everybody guesses wildly all the time, I suppose it's only in professions like mine where someone gets called out on a daily basis for absurd guesswork with no information whatsoever. And that asshole I sent the email to hasn't replied to my email about renting a bike. Does nobody in this continent want my money more than the black people and brown people selling garbage on the street?