A First Glimpse At Rome

ROME, Italy– Italy: country number 92. The entry process was perhaps one of the smoothest experiences I’ve ever had when coming into a new country. Immigration was automated with AI — I basically just walked right through. Once in the airport I hesitated for a moment while considering getting a local SIM card … but decided it wasn’t worth 40 Euro. Otherwise, I would have seamlessly strolled off the plane, through the airport, across the passenger pick up lane, down into a train station, and onto a train which took me into the center of Rome.

If only all airports in all cities could be as easy as this …

… and I’m not sure why they aren’t.

If you can build an airport and you can build rail / subway lines then why can’t you just connect the train to the airport?

The thing that really stands out to the foreigner about Western Europe is that the place just makes sense. These are cultures who can devise plans and execute them … for better or worse.

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Travel is perhaps best when you don’t need to think about it — when you can just move through a place on autopilot, concentrating on the people, languages, food, architecture — the stuff! — that’s all around you.

While I like to brag about the fact that the first ten years of my travels were done prior to the smartphone era, where you had to be able to know how to read a map and use a compass, I’m not necessarily nostalgic for it. The work of travel — figuring out where you’re going, how to get there, finding places to stay, and places to get food — oddly does little to bring you deeper into a place.

In the everyday world, these are all considered chores, but when traveling this is what you’re paying for. I don’t want to pay for it.

It’s a distraction — something that occupies the mind and pulls your attention away from the wondrously confusing flow of human question marks that are flowing all around you. It’s only when you can relax and start looking around and engaging your surroundings that you really begin cashing in the currency of travel.

Something within me hates to say this, but when it comes to modern travel you can just skip the preliminaries and dig right in. There is a flip side to all of my complaining about smartphones and automated airport security and AI immigration. While you get drastically less cred for traveling these days, our digital tools allow for a deeper experience … if we use them right.

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Italy has been a country that has been mocking me for many years … no, for many decades. It’s a first tier country on the international traveler’s map — one that travelers usually get to within the first few years of their journey — but I went 20 years on the road and 90+ countries and it was just never on the path.

And I have no idea why.

I’ve been to the countries to the east, to the west, and to the north of Italy. My World’s Most Traveled People account has often mocked me by saying that Italy is the easiest country in the world that I hadn’t yet been to …

But not any more.

I’m here.

But I’m here for a slightly different reason than usual. It’s my wife’s 40th birthday, and rather than having a party and getting gifts and me taking her out for a wastefully expensive diner, she decided that she’d rather take a trip to Italy.

At first, my wife was actually undecided as to whether she wanted to bring me to Italy with her or not. The thought of just walking aimlessly around Rome with nobody else pushing or pulling her in any direction, where she could just sit in any restaurant without having to worry if it meets someone else’s dietary / sanitary / price preferences, where she could just hang out at a cafe without a restless person sitting across from her wanting to go somewhere else, where she could mindlessly cruise to the tourist attractions without someone commenting on how overpriced and understimulating they are, was rather appealing.

And I totally got it. I wouldn’t want to travel with me.

But in the end she decided that she’d prefer to abandon her personal preferences and have me along with her. Apparently, missing me trumped being able to do whatever she wanted.

That said, I took a back seat on this trip — I didn’t even wake up at six am to scurry off to a gym.

That said, this was all a bit of a different travel experience for me. Usually, I travel to collect stories and information for articles and films, or I travel with my kids and it’s all about playing around and having fun, or I travel with just my wife and I go to one of our … niche resorts, but I rarely ever just do pure, legit tourism. This isn’t for any idealistic reasons; I just usually have other things to do. I found the thought appealing.

“Allow yourself to be surprised.”

But if it wasn’t for my wife I probably wouldn’t have bothered. I probably would have set out to see the sites but ended up just aimlessly walking around taking pictures … in some of the most incredible natural lighting that I’ve ever experienced. Rome in early November — with the sun hanging low in the sky all day, producing these interesting, long shadows and casting everything in this shimmering golden hue — is really something special. You couldn’t paint this place any better …

The Colosseum was a good walk. The Pantheon — and especially the area to the back of it — was thoroughly relaxing. The Trevi Fountain was under construction and didn’t have any water in it, but for some reason people still lined up all the way down the street to look at it. I really don’t get that one.

I would recommend travel as a way to get healthy and fit … if most people didn’t use it as an excuse to pile their faces with food all day long. I’m not a foodie. I actually find the common traveler’s preoccupation with food disgusting. Unless you’re talking about a place like Mongolia or Tibet or Southern India, most of the food in the world is more or less the same: it’s noodles, it’s bread, it’s rice with some combination of meat, vegetables, oil, salt, butter, and sugar. I just don’t find it very interesting.

But my wife does. And a part of the joy of our walks around Rome was watching her sample all of the different pizzas, pastas, and gelatos. It’s alleged that I may have even taken a bite of a piece of Roman pizza … or licked one of her gelatos.

People come to Italy for the food. Perhaps that’s why it took me so long to get here.