A Roman Holiday - Day 5 - "Con Te Partiro"

9/14/16, “Con Te Partiro”

Rome Fiumicino Airport, Italy (FCO)

The time has come to say goodbye to Rome.  I would typically entitle this entry “The Return Journey,” but I believe this title is more fitting.  It is time to say goodbye, not just to Rome and Italy, but, in fact, to continental Europe as well.  Over the past four years, I have ventured to the European continent eight times now, visiting a new Olympic Stadium each time.  Well, I have seen them all, the ones in continental Europe, at least.  All that remain to visit are the London 2012 Stadium and the two in Australia.

I know that I will return to this continental mainland again, to see more of Spain, to spend more time in Fennoscandia, to see the sites in Wallonia, to go to Oktoberfest in Munich.  All of those trips will come, but I have no idea when.  I also know that a longer trip to Italy will come, but I know not when either.  For everything that I have planned for the past four years and the next year, nothing is planned after my return from Hawaii in a year.  I have a list of 21 trips that I want to take in my 30s, but they are completely unplanned beyond an entry in my spreadsheet describing how long I think the trip would be.

That is the great thing about travel, goodbye never has to be forever.  The sites that have stood for thousands of years will be there in another decade or two.  The border agents will always be ready to stamp my passport again.  As I reflect on my time in Italy, it gives me great comfort knowing that I will, eventually, return to the Eternal City.  It is called that for a reason.

I will reflect more broadly either from inside the terminal or en route, and, as is my tradition, I will treat the return journey in its entirety once I get home, but, for now, I will solely reflect on this trip.  First, let’s start with the obvious, the Eternal City itself.  I love that name so much.  It is so fitting.  When I went to Israel, my favorite city was Akko, which was dripping with history.  You could walk along the historic walls, and the city was very much intact.  My favorite places in Greece had a similar feel.  Istanbul, the same.

Now, reader, Rome has it too, but it has it in spades.  Every era of history for the past over 2000 years is intact in the Eternal City.  One block you might pass through an ancient alley, only to walk out to a cathedral from the time of the Renaissance, and the next block could be a modern building from the early 1900s.  It all blends together so effortlessly.

In Tuscany, you see the heart of the Renaissance in Florence and the medieval architecture in Pisa, but there are also ancient Roman ruins to be found.  The city of Florence looks much the same today as it did during the time of Michelangelo and the Medicis.  Those are names that are so much larger than life, like Fibonacci and Galileo, that I simply cannot picture them walking the streets of Florence and Pisa, but I know they did it, the very same streets that I walked.  I know that I walked the same streets in Rome that Caligula and Julius Caesar and all the other famous Romans walked.

I saw the Colosseum and walked the Forum.  Only two other places in the world have ever given me such a feeling of history: the old city of Jerusalem and ancient parts of Athens.  Nothing else comes close.  As I have mentioned, I am prepared to say that, for a tourist, Rome is the greatest city in the world.  Rome has everything that Jerusalem and Athens has, combined with the history of global reach and modern buildings of London and New York.

To anyone who has never left North America and has a chance to take a short trip to Europe, I would be forced to recommend Rome above all, and I would say it exactly the same that Audrey Hepburn’s princess said it in “A Roman Holiday.”  When I get home, there are three movies I will want to watch to remember my time here: A Roman Holiday, of course, Caligula, and Gladiator.  Other than sites that I saw, I simply enjoyed this trip on a level I rarely enjoy trips.  I might even go so far as to say that the last solo trip that I so enjoyed was my birthday trip last year to Africa.

I ate pizza and pasta in their homeland.  I drank so much wine and so much gelato.  I did not have a single bad meal the entire trip, not to mention all the Toscano cigars.  Just walking around the city every night was so enjoyable.  It had become my home for half a week.  There were things I missed, including the Mouth of Truth made famous from “A Roman Holiday,” but that has been there thousands of years, and it will be here when I return.  I will not love that movie any less when I return.  I saw Rome and got my taste of Tuscany, but so much remains.

It is a country that has 51 World Heritage Sites, more than any in the world.  51.  I don’t think any other country has more than 40.  Of the 51, I saw 6.  I will definitely be back for the other 45.  I just don’t know when.  I have a suitcase of souvenirs, and I believe that I will need to make a separate display area just for Italy, possibly with or adjoining my Hellenic display from Greece and Turkey, or separate.  I have gotten my replica of the Colosseum, which I can now proudly display on my desk, along with the other six replicas of the New7 Wonders of the World.  I can add my Italian flag pin to my board with the others.  My country count is up to 66.

There are so many other facts I could recall, but the facts do not do justice to the magnitude of this trip.  Rome had been the biggest hole in my list for quite some time, and I am glad that I have finally done it.  I have not even left yet, and I am already ready to come back.  My Euros are gone, and I will not be spending Euros again for quite some time, but that is okay.  I believe that my travels to continental Europe have done justice to do it.  As my brother would say, I did it up right.  On that note, I will close for now so that I can begin the check-in process.

Now, to continue.  I am holed up inside one of those smoking cages that is common to European airports.  There are no seats per se, but I am comfortably seated on the floor in the corner, my back resting up against the wall.  The suit will definitely need to go to the cleaners when I get back.  I will use this time to reflect on this summer of travel.  As I wrote from Newark almost four months ago, I loved that this summer would begin with Athens and end with Rome.

There is such a nice symmetry to that.  In between, the big trip, of course, was the GOAT trip, Rio for the Games of the XXXI Olympiad.  There were also smaller trips I took in between, almost all of them, at least partially, with friends.  I loved and lost and searched for love again.  I lost friends, while other friendships faded away, but I also made new friends, including a chance encounter outside a bathroom in Rio that turned into a nice friendship that continues to develop, and cemented other friendships.  It is actually funny to think of how I met all the friends to which I am referring.

Someone Liked a few posts on my Instagram page, and, a year later, he had become one of my best friends.  Another friend started hanging out with me after the cigar shop closed, and he is now my best friend.  He introduced me to his friend from college, and the three of us became a squad.  Then, of course, there was the chance encounter outside the Tony’s 4 years ago, which led to an amazing friendship that continues to this very day.  Another friend I met because he saw me working with his arch nemesis in autographing, and we became friends instead.  All of the friends that I mentioned have accompanied me on one of the trips this summer.

The first trip after Greece was when my friend Roberto, the friend from Instagram, came to visit me in New York.  He stayed with me for a week, and we went to Philadelphia together to see Independence Hall and take care of another NPS in Pennsylvania.  My friend Connor, the one who was introduced to me, joined us for the first day of that trip as well.  I then proceeded to show Roberto the way I do New York on a weekly basis as Roberto stayed with me for the week.

At the end of the week, I went to visit the friend I met at the Tony’s.  I loved that I departed for that trip four years to the day after we met.  Our plan was to see the new Harry Potter play, which was in two parts, Saturday and Tuesday nights.  Her flight was cancelled, and she missed her flight, which left me to see the first night with just her parents, with whom I very much enjoyed spending the evening.  I had my own adversity, and the trip was, pretty much, a disaster.  While I enjoyed my time in Wales, the disasters of the trip was the impetus for the follow-up trip I will be taking in November, the one I am entitling, “Because It’s There: The Experience”.  I enjoyed being reunited with my friend after almost two years, but we had too short of a time together, which also led to us planning her upcoming visit to New York so that we can see the Fantastic Beasts premiere together.

The next weekend, well, most of what occurred that weekend is unpublishable, but that Sunday was Father’s Day, so I made it up to Scarsdale to celebrate that with my father.  The weekend after that was my annual trip to Maine, and Connor came with me on that trip as well.  That was a fun trip.

Then Fourth of July weekend, which brought me to the Canadian Maritime, but my flight was cancelled, and it screwed up the trip, prompting the trip I will take next weekend to catch one of the sites I missed.  I managed to rearrange that weekend, though, and very much enjoyed my time in Nova Scotia and PEI.

When I got back, the next weekend was mostly unpublishable again, included Connor’s going away party, and it led to the lost love I mentioned earlier.  I went up to Scarsdale again just Sunday night and watched the conclusion of the Gymnastics trials.  The weekend after that was the last weekend I would have to myself for quite some time.

The following weekend, I went to Pittsburgh and West Virginia with my friend Stu for our annual random amusement park and NPS trip.  We had fun like we always do, despite being ready to kill each other at the end of the trip, like we always are.

The weekend after that, my brother and sister-in-law came into town to surprise my father for his big birthday.  The five of us had a great time together.  It was good to have the whole family reunited again.  If memory serves me right, the last time it was just the five of us hanging out in such a relaxed fashion was in Kentucky, four years ago, when I set out to see the world.  I cannot count the wedding venue trip or the wedding trip, since the former was by no mean relaxed, and the latter was not just the five of us.

Then came Rio, for the Games of the XXXI Olympiad, with my friend Raymond, the one who used to follow me home from the cigar shop after closing.  It was definitely the GOAT trip, the greatest of all time.  I loved the whole trip, and I do not need to go into more detail about how amazing it was to be there.  It was during that trip that I met the girl from Detroit who is starting to become a very dear friend now.  That covered two weekends, and I spent the last weekend of the Games watching in Scarsdale.  I needed the weekend after that to recover.

The next weekend, Labor Day weekend, took me to Mexico to meet my friend Roberto.  Our destination was Oaxaca, and we had a great time together, despite the adversity.  We will be going to the Borderlands together next month.  Then came this trip, “A Roman Holiday”, and I have certainly spent enough time discussing this trip.

In theory, this summer should have, by far, been the best summer of travel yet, but due to all the adversity, it fell flat.  It was still a great summer of travel, but the adversity that happened with my trips to London and the Maritimes precluded it from beating some other summers.  It is hard to beat a summer that began in Athens and ended in Rome with a trip to the Olympics in between, but I’ve certainly had some truly great summers.  Maybe it was the best summer of travel so far, but it didn’t blow away the other summers like I expected it to.

Next summer will be even better, as I close out my mission, with trips to Canada, Iceland/Greenland, and the South Pacific trip that will close it all out.  It will not be as jam-packed as my other trips, but the four trips that I will take that summer will all be epic, the last one most of all.  What will the summers of 2018 and beyond entail?  I know not, but I know that I will have many more great summers of travel ahead, and I look forward to them very much. 

One trip that I know I will do one summer, and one that I already have a few people who want to join me for it, is a week across Russia on the Tran-Siberian Railroad, which promises to be a very fun trip.  I will also do an extended trip to Fennoscandia one summer.  Mongolia and Spain, too, will be summer destinations.  There are definitely a lot of great trips to be coming up in my future, both in the next year and beyond, and I hope that they can match up to all the great trips I have taken thus far.  On that note, I will close so that I can try to get something to eat before we board.

Aboard AZ 602, En route FCO-JFK

Now, as promised, there is only thing left on which to reflect, the past 29 years of my life.  For all the ups and downs over the past year, almost nothing has changed since I turned 28.  A lot has happened over the past 12 months, and, other than the shifting friendships, my life is almost exactly in the same place as it was 12 months ago.  I am okay with that, and I am okay with that being the case in 12 months, as well.  I was not always okay with that.  Each birthday I have celebrated during this mission has provided a unique perspective on where I was and where I was going.  This Roman Holiday should be no exception.

All I see is the 12 months ahead of me, and I see it great detail.  I see many of the same misadventures of the past 12 months repeating themselves in the next 12 months, and, who knows, I could meet someone and my life could forever change, or I could just have more of the same relationship drama that I have had at various points during this mission.  Or maybe I’ve already met Miss Right and just haven’t realized it yet.  Life is so unpredictable, and it takes so many twists and turns that the idea of having a life plan is almost laughable.

These Travel Goals, though, I have, for the most part, followed the original list I made three years, have required constant readjustments.  However, after those 12 months, I see nothing.  I have no idea what October of 2017 will entail, or what my life will be like beyond, and I am okay with that, surprisingly.  I have spent the past four years working on these travel goals, and I will diligently spend one more year on it, but then what?  I do not know.  Again, I am okay with that.

I will soon be making my way back to the office, and I will get back to my normal life, to reaffirming my ever-shifting friendships (both new and old) and seeing where other relationships can lead.  I will start more aggressively planning my 2017 trips, and I will get back to the normal routine of school work and regular work.  I will be taking a day off to go to Texas with my mother next month, but, other than that, I will not having any vacation days until the Thanksgiving trip, which I will probably finish fully booking upon my return.

It has been a great trip and, despite the disappointments and setbacks, I very much look forward to eventually returning here.  I will treat the return journey in its entirety upon clearing border control at Kennedy.  On that note, I will close, as we are about to start making our descent.

En route, NYC Airporter 617

And now, at long lost, in its entirety, The Return Journey.  After I closed last night, I packed and was soon asleep, hopng to get 2 full REM cycles.  That hope was not to be.  I was woken up various times throughout the night, including by my brother who tried to engage me in a video chat at 4 AM my time, the notification waking me up, in addition to other notifications waking me as well.  Then, at 4:40 AM, I got a call from the front desk that my car was there.  Yeah, the car service never changed the reservation.  I explained it would be at 5:40 AM, and he told the driver.  I woke up around 5:30 AM, quickly got ready, and headed down.  The driver looked like she might have been the mother of my driver from yesterday.  I don’t just mean that they were of the right age, I mean that they had very similar features.

I enjoyed seeing the familiar sights for the last time, and I rested my eyes as soon as we left the walls of the City of Rome.  It was about 6:15 AM when I got to the airport, and the check-in counter was not opened yet.  I got a cappuccino to go and went outside where I lit up a Toscano and wrote the first entry.  I then checked in, glad to have the same Seat 15D that I had on the way in, and headed to security.  I went in search of duty-free, first getting two bottles of wine, then trying to find my traditional birthday box of Montecristo No. 4, but I had no luck.  All they had was Toscanos and Davidoffs.  That was disappointing. I got some grappa, espresso, a pasta kit, pancetta, salami, and hard cheese.

I then went to the smoking cage, lit up a Bolivar Brasil Exclusivo, and wrote my second entry.  Then, in order to board the plane, we had to walk down many flights of stairs, no easy feat with all of my luggage, which now included three bottles of alcohol.  I was soon on the plane and fell asleep almost immediately after take-off.

I woke up for lunch and quickly fell back asleep.  Around 5 PM Rome time, 11 AM NYC time, I woke up.  I got a snack from the galley, along with wine and sparkling water.  I did some reading for school, wrote a letter about the drama with my landlord, and wrote the third entry above.  We were soon landing.  It was about 1:40 PM when we got off the plane, and I really wanted to make the 2 PM bus back to the city, otherwise I would get to the office after 4 PM, which would be an issue.

I did my usual Global Entry and went to Customs.  He asked what was in the duty-free bags, and I told him, listing my purchases, but he wanted to see them.  He pointed out the cheese, saying I needed to declare it.  Apparently, the salami and pancetta were a problem, too, and I lost the pancetta, but I got to keep the cheese, after passing my bags through an x-ray machine.  That was the only drama, though.

I headed to the bus stop, and the bus had not left yet.  The seats I liked in the back were covered by a liquid that I would eventually learn was water coming from the ACU.  I wiped them off and sat down, using the second backmost ones as a foot rest once we left the terminal.  I then proceeded to write this entry, which I will now close, along with formally closing out this trip and the summer of travel.  Next stop: Toronto and Miguasha National Park to come “full circle” on all the travel I have done to Eastern Canada.