Traveling Update - Or Is It?

I don't know where to start. I'm on my fourth currency in two weeks. I don't have a credit card (that's how they track you). Instad, when I started traveling, I had a Ziplock bag with 4500 lira in it, and I would change at each new country. It was a little harder with languages. By the time I got to Paris, I would start ordering in Turkish, then switch to Italian when I realized it. By the time I made it to French, the transaction was usually over.

The trip, my journey, could be summed up with a picture of me standing in line.


Rain turned out to be the norm for line standing conditions.

There really isn't an "off-season" for tourism. The guide books say there is, but they also said that La Spaghettari was an excellent restaurant, and we all know better, don't we? Or at least  now I know. That they charge for the bread in your table basket by the slice, whether or not you eat it.
No matter when you visit, the line to the Colloseum is always a thirty minute wait, and the Lourve is always crowded (except around the classical marbles, and those are my jam), and the Chinese people in London are always yelling at you to try their fried rice when really they know once you try it you're going to order a serving or two. It's smart business, I guess.

I think Rome is consistently my favorite city. The gelato is pretty cheap, the baroque churches are free, and the food is not only good but also understandable.

(While I knew foie gras was the liver of a goose that had been specially force fed, I didn't know how to eat it. After the first couple of bites a waitress had to come to my table, take my fork away, and then show me how to spread the pate of liver onto bread. I thanked her in Turkish, and she said, "You're welcome" in English.)

Rome was also one of the only places I saw the sun. I could take off my jacket. It was also the only place where it was fun to be outside at night. Every other city we would run from the train station to whatever apartment we were staying at. I felt like I was back at 408 E. Lafayette, the house where I grew up. The monsters owned the night there.

Probably the best part of the trip was British Parliment. It happened as the sun was going down. As we walked back to the station (quickly, and always checking manhole covers to see if they were properly fastened), a guard asked us if we wanted to sit in on a session of the House of Commons. For free. We gave him high fives. In the process of security I was issued a photo I.D. and absolutely zero instructions about where to go. After fifteen minutes of wandering we made it to the gallery above the House floor, where we listened to an argument about privatizing the postal service. But much more than the American Senate, it was fascinating because, once I understood what they were talking about, it became apparent that with each speech the representatives were insulting each other. The most common slander was that the opposite party wasn't capable of understanding the main argument, but one member went so far as to suggest that his debate opponent wasn't capable of being a postal worker. The experience made returning to the American way of doing things feel cheap.