This is obviously a blog.

Not Ciao yet. This is my only chance ever at an epilogue so I am taking it. I asked Cash, Evie, and occasionally Mick a series of questions about the trip. Here were their answers.

What was your favorite cities, ranked 1, 2, and 3:

Evie: Nice, Viareggio, Paris

Cash: Nice, Viareggio, Rome

Mick (She has been everywhere multiple times except Viareggio): Viareggio

What was your favorite country:

Evie: Italy

Cash: Italy

Mick: N/A

What was your favorite site/attraction?

Evie: Viareggio Beach, Catacombs, Eiffel Tower

Cash: British Museum, Colosseum, St. Peter’s

Mick: Colosseum and dinner at Cafe de la Paix in Paris

What was your favorite part about Europe?

Evie: Climate.

Cash: The views and the history.

What was your least favorite part about Europe?

Evie: Traffic and crowds.

Cash: The longevity of the trip. Two days too long.

What was the most unexpected thing about Europe?

Evie: She didn’t expect how independent we would let them be.

Cash: The cuisine surpassed his expectations.

You thought about Europe before you came here and now you can compare what you thought to what you experienced. What is different?

Evie: I thought Paris would be filled with flowers and sunny, but it rained while we were in Paris. Also, Florence looked like it got in a fist fight and lost.

Cash: London surpassed my expectations, and Florence and the rest of the cities were way more beautiful than I thought they would be.

What was the least fun thing we did?

Evie: Climbing St. Peter’s dome. The view was great but I did not like the stairs.

Cash: Catacombs. The atmosphere was super dead.

What was your most memorable moment?

Evie: When we walked up the stairs from the Grottoes and saw St. Peter’s Cathedral for the first time.

Cash: Swimming in the Mediterranean in Viareggio.

Mick: When I watched the kids see the Mediterranean for the first time in Nice.

What did you learn about your life/the world?

Evie: I learned how to travel and leave my family without getting overwhelmed.

Cash: The US is not even close to the center of the world, as I think a lot of Americans might believe. Train travel is better than planes. It is really easy. People seem to be nicer and more relaxed here.

ME

As for me, I thought that the Catacombs was the coolest thing I saw. I’ve never been to Paris, so that was my favorite city on this trip (tied with Viareggio of course.) Viareggio is really cool. Don’t go because Caroline and I are now retiring there and I don’t want tourists. This trip also reinforced the fact that I fucking hate stairs.

I also learned that Europeans have a way lower body temperature than I do, because I was hot the entire trip and I did not see a single European person sweat. They also don’t care about ice as much as me.

Finally, I learned that Australians are my favorite people on Earth. I only chatted briefly with one Australian guy, but it reminded me from past experience that they are super laid back even though every species on their continent tries to kill them on a daily basis. Best outlook on life that I have ever witnessed. Ok now I am done. Ciao ciao ciao ciao ciao ciao…. ciao.

Man, this has been an absolute thing. We are on our last day in Rome and then we are heading to the airport hotel tomorrow. We plan to do nothing tomorrow. We head back to the states on Tuesday.

First up today, the Trevi Fountain.

I have never seen so many people in one place in my entire life. There were like 10,000 people in this square. It was hard to move. 4/5 because of all of the people.

Then we ran into this guy doing a one-man-band gig. 5/5. I think he is a midget but I don’t know the height qualifications. He was probably 3’7. Is that midget status? Maybe we will never know. The kids were obsessed with him which makes me think he is, though. They couldn’t get enough of this little fella.

Then we made it to the Pantheon. We did not go inside because crowds. I have a soft spot for the Pantheon because Rafael’s tomb is located inside.

If you aren’t familiar with Rafael, he is the OOG (Original Original Gangster.) He was born 500 years before your run-of-the-mill OGs, like Eazy-E, Snoop, John Shaft, the Counting Crows lead singer, and John Mayer. Rafael was considered a master painter as a teenager, and the pope called him to Rome when he was 17 where he began his female conquests. Some sources even said his death was linked to an all-nighter with one of his mistresses. Rafael was commissioned to paint “The School of Athens” in the Vatican, a painting about Greek philosophers. He painted all of his buddies as the Greek philosophers. Fucking LEGEND.

Instead of going in, we had lunch and people-watched. Suddenly, Evie started to cry.

I thought she might be overwhelmed by the beauty of Rome, but it turned out that the one-man-band midget showed up (see background) and she got really sad because she thought nobody wanted to play in a band with him. I told her that if I played an instrument, I would be back in Rome to meet with that guy in a fucking heartbeat to try out for his band. This did not console her. Teenage hormones I guess.

Anyway, this will probably be my last post for the trip unless anything weird happens in the airport hotel tomorrow. If you liked reading my blog, please feel free to not subscribe to anything because I am never doing this again. Also don’t smash any like buttons because I don’t care. Ciao.

Today started with the absolute best cab driver I have ever had. His name was Giovanni. I have never met a more Italian sounding person in my life. We flagged down Giovanni to take us to the Colosseum. He liked to talk/yell, and his hand gestures were off the charts. First he wanted to talk about Silvio Berlusconi, the former Prime Minister of Italy.

Then we told him that we were considering going to Pompeii tomorrow. He said he was just there, and he would rather drive his cab.

Finally, he brought up his mother. And then she called.

Giovanni drove pretty crazy and even took a short cut on actual train tracks, but he got us to the Colosseum. If you haven’t been, there are not a lot of words to describe it. Cash is really into Roman history, so this was his Graceland. It was 11am and already 85 degrees, so I knew this was going to be amazing and suck at the same time.

Before we left, I preemptively bought Mick a ticket and then called her to ask if she wanted to go, but she said she would just sit in a coffee shop nearby while we walked around. When we got there, she said, “You know, I’ve never done a tour of this before.” And I said, “I actually have a ticket for you if you want to come! But you probably won’t want to do Palatine Hill because it’s a lot of walking.” So she came into the Colosseum with us.

Mick was on her usual extremely fast walking pace, and we hustled through the museum portion of the tour. I turned around and Cash said, “You guys go. I am taking my time.” So me, Evie, and Mick stopped and took a break while Cash looked at every artifact and read every word in the museum. He was in heaven.

When we finished up it was time to go out in the sweltering heat to Palatine Hill. I said, “Mick, if you want to go to a cafe and wait for us, we will look around and then come find you. And she said, “Nope, I am coming with.” So we all walked up Palatine Hill and got to the top. It was a total bitch.

Here is Mick and the kids at the top of Palatine Hill. She has more stamina than I do. Tomorrow we are headed to the Fountain of Trevi and The Pantheon. And tomorrow is our last full day in Rome.

Oh man, we did a lot today. The chafing is out of control and I forgot to pack Gold Bond. As always, we woke up and had breakfast on the rooftop, but this was a lot different.

There is something pretty magical about having a coffee and catching up on the news while you are overlooking the Vatican.

We took a cab over to Campo de’ Fiore, a market in a square that sells a bunch of different things. Mostly crap, but pretty cool nonetheless.

Then we started walking toward St. Peter‘s Square. We walked into a few amazing churches along the way, and then stopped and had some gelato.

We were still about 1.5 miles away from St. Peter’s, so we decided to take transportation the rest of the way. Mickie and I have had a small feud going about whether to take Ubers or cabs, so we were politely arguing when Evie said, “Guys, the 62 Bus is four stops away. In three stops it will get us to St. Peter’s.” I was pretty impressed with that because I don’t know how buses work.

We hopped on the bus and sure enough, after 3 stops it dropped us off. We found our tour person and we were off to St Peter’s Basillica.

It was really hot. Cash and Evie were troopers though. The tour guide started us in the Grottoes, where 91 popes are entombed. I did this 18 years ago, but it was still an amazing experience, especially because it was Cash and Evie’s first time.

As we were walking through the Grottoes, our tour guide would stop at some popes tombs and pass others. I said to Evie, “I feel kind of bad that we paid attention to some of these popes but we didn’t stop at a lot of them.” Evie said, “Oh yeah. I feel bad too.” And she turned around and said “Sorry Popes. We will be back to learn about you!”

Here is Evie and Cash in front of St. Peter’s tomb. I don’t know about the thumbs up but I think it is a positive gesture so it’s all good in my book. Then we climbed the staircase and Cash and Evie saw St. Peter’s for the first time.

This place is insane if you haven’t been. Giant ceilings, amazing statues, frescoes everywhere. I didn’t realize that I had booked a tour for three hours and we were pretty tired, but the tour guide showed us everything in there. After 2 hours and 30 minutes, Cash and Evie got really tired. Also, I honestly think I have a hairline fracture in my foot from The Eiffel Tower, so I was kind of limping along.

Here are some pictures the kids got:

Then we started walking out of the basilica and we were all super excited to go back to the hotel. The tour guide walked us around the building and took us to a stairwell and said, “Now you go up! Ciao! Give me a good review. I’m not going up. I never do.” I thought, “Nooooooooo” but we wound up going up to the very top of the dome. This was something I did with Caroline several years ago when I exercised and stuff, and it was a pain in the ass then.

We got to the top and I am honestly not sure if I have stopped sweating profusely this entire trip.

Evie got this picture here. I don’t know who that is but she doesn’t seem to too happy about the stairs.

Cash took these photos and I clearly am not happy about the stairs either.

Then we had dinner back on the hotel roof and we are heading to the Colosseum in the morning. I made sure kids were not on their phones for the entire day and it was like there were actually four people on the trip!

We had breakfast this morning and then headed to the Firenze Santa Maria Novella Train station and headed to Rome.

We didn’t know our train gate until about 10 minutes before the train took off, but we made it. We hopped on the train and I sat down next to Mick. An Italian man in his 50’s sat down across from me. He violated my personal space for the entire duration of the train ride.

The yellow line above indicates the middle point underneath the table that you do not cross. There is plenty of room for two people to sit comfortably across from each other with their legs not touching.

He immediately sat down and slouched as low as possible and sandwiched my legs in between his. In the pic above, his left leg was touching my right leg. I immediately put outward pressure on the inside of his leg with my right leg to let him know I wasn’t going to do this for an hour and a half, but he just let his leg move with mine, and when I stopped pushing and brought my leg inward, his just moved with mine inward and they continued touching. He didn’t even look at me when I did it, as if two grown men’s legs touching was totally fucking normal. Well it’s not.

This one is a little harder to see so I made the diagram above. The dude falls asleep and fully extends his legs under my seat and his legs are touching both of my legs. I spread a little to get some space and his legs were just limp. When I had to go to the bathroom, I pushed his right leg out into the aisle with my left leg so I could get out. When I got back to my seat his right leg was still extended out into the aisle. I sat down and he moved it back in after a few minutes, and snuggled it up to my leg again. Is this some kind of European thing? Was he into 45 year old guys with gray hair? What the actual fuck was going on here? I still feel violated. 0/5 stars.

We checked into the hotel and I opened the window, and this was our view:

At first I thought it was an aqueduct because I don’t know shit. I looked it up and it was Muro Torto (The Twisted Wall.) Supposedly Nero was buried close to here and its haunted. Evie was near me so I said, “Hey Evie! That is the Muro Torto! Check it out!” And she walks over and goes, “oh, that’s lit” and immediately went back to unpacking.

Then we walked over to the Spanish Steps.

The kids were on their phones too much today so as punishment I made them walk down the steps to take this picture, and then walk back up. I never planned to do anything with this picture. You can’t even see their faces and I didn’t expect to. That wasn’t the point. Neither kid liked the Spanish Steps. I gave it 5/5 stars.

We had dinner on a rooftop restaurant. Some Vatican helicopters were doing patrols above us. Not sure why I made this picture black and white, but the helicopters are blurry anyway, so whatever.

This was the sunset over Rome tonight. The Saharan dust storms are making things a little hazy here. That may sound exotic, but Florida is getting it too so it is not that special.

We got up, had breakfast, and sped off to Florence. It was supposed to take an hour 30 minutes but it only took about an hour because I wanted to get rid of the rental car, so I went ludicrous speed. I logged 300 miles of accident free, nobody dead, European driving. We got to Hotel Croce de Malta at noon.

This gargoyle thing was in the hotel lobby and Cash told me that is what he saw every morning when he woke up and looked toward my bed. He is probably not wrong, but his joke gets 2/5 stars from me, and 5/5 from Cash.

This is the view from right outside our hotel. The plaza is called the Piazza di Santa Maria Novella, and the statue is called the Obelisk of Turtles. It is made of white marble, which they may have sourced from the Mountains of Versillia (which I posted about yesterday.) Many historical interpretations of obelisks are that they are phallic symbols. When I saw this statue for the first time, all I could think about was how fucking pissed I would be if I was an average Roman living several centuries ago and someone made me drag white marble down from the Mountains of Versillia to Florence so that they could build a big dick in a park.

After we checked in, we walked down to the Duomo di Firenze. We decided to wait in line to get in, and it was worth it. The whole time I was trying to figure out who made the statues inside but it’s a little confusing. Michelangelo was commissioned to do 12 statues but he took too long on the first one and they fired him and he got pissed and left town. The one he partially made got moved to a museum. Donatello apparently did a bunch and may have overseen the making of this one:

I dunno. Maybe we saw some statues they made, and maybe we didn’t. Whatever the case, I bet they did a good job. 5/5.

The painting on the dome is of The Last Judgement. Vasari started painting it in 1572 but then he died and three other guys finished it. Some think the quality of work is uneven because there were different artists using different painting techniques. I mean it looks fine to me. Plus it’s like 500 feet above the floor so it’s hard to see. I bet it’s also pretty dangerous to paint that high up. I would have just given everyone their money and a pat on the back, and told the critics that if they didn’t like it they could go up there and do it themselves. Some people are dicks for no reason. 5/5 stars.

We went to eat at a really nice Italian restaurant and the waiter brought us cookies once we were finished. Cash popped one in his mouth, and it turned out that it was a pistachio cookie. He is severely allergic to pistachios. We went back to the hotel to grab the EpiPen and went up to the bar on the roof. Here is the beautiful sunset over Florence while I nervously waited to stab my son in his leg with the EpiPen:

He didn’t have a reaction, so that is great news. The view was 2/5 stars because I was not having fun. Tomorrow we are taking a train to Rome, which will be our last stop. We will be there for five days, however, so you are going to have to deal with my shitty blog until Monday night. Deal with it.

Ok so this day made up for yesterday. We woke up and drove right to Viareggio in an hour and twenty five minutes. Apparently yesterday was a big Italian holiday which is another reason why the traffic was so bad.

Viareggio is an awesome Italian Riviera beach town. We immediately checked in to the Presidente Hotel and went to the beach. 5/5 for the town and the hotel.

This was the beach club. It was pretty empty except for us and several pairs of ancient boobs that were exposed and blowing around in the Mediterranean wind. Before the trip, Cash was pretty excited about the prospect of topless beaches. He is no longer excited. I told him the truth before we came here but he didn’t listen. Now he has experienced the truth. That is what this trip is about, right? 5/5 for the beach club and the old lady boobs.

If you look closely at the mountain range, you can see what looks like glaciers. That is actually white marble up there. I know, those last two sentences sounds like I am trying to lengthen this blog with random shit, and that is because I am. The kids are gonna look back at this one day and I don’t want them to think I phoned it in.

Anyway, we swam in the Mediterranean and hung out on beach chairs for the whole afternoon. Cash and I bodysurfed but Evie refused to partake because she said it was stupid. I don’t know, maybe she didn’t want to look stupid in front of the lifeguard.

The main thing I disliked about living in Illinois was traffic on the Kennedy. I have also been in traffic in NYC and LA. I have to say that at least today, Italy is the world heavyweight champion of traffic. The distance between Nice and Rapallo is 107 miles. We picked up the car today at 10:30 and started heading toward Italy.

First we tried to have lunch in Èze, France, but the traffic there was so heavy that they closed the road into the city.

Then we drove to Monaco and attempted lunch, but there were no parking spots in the entire country. The whole time I had Apple Maps open with Rapallo as the destination. As we drove closer to Italy, the time to our destination kept getting higher and higher.

If you know Chicago traffic, you know that there is always construction, but they tend to work on 10-20 miles at a time. These motherfuckers in southern Italy had construction going for 90 miles (I did the gene thing and found out I am 2% Italian, so I can call them whatever I want. Sono al 2% Italiano!) We crossed the border at about 1pm and it took 6 hours to get 90 miles. Our average speed was 14 mph.

It definitely wasn’t the worst place to get stuck in traffic because the views were stunning, but good lord. Italian traffic got 1/5 from all of us.

The kids were super cool through the ride and we got there with no one wanting to kill anyone. We were all really tired, so we decided to quickly go out and have dinner.

We stopped into a restaurant near the hotel, and as the hostess was taking us to our seat, a toddler ran around a table right into my path and I accidentally punted her. I picked her up and she was ok but the table was mad and I didn’t know what to do so I said “¡Lo siento!,” which is Spanish for “I am sorry.” After a quick Google search tonight I learned that “lo siento” in Italian means “I feel it.” And yes, I did feel the 3 year old on my shin as I drop kicked her across the room.

Then I quickly walked to our table and the hostess said, “Ecco il vostro tavolo” and I was really flustered from accidentally kicking that baby so I said “Habo.” I don’t think that is a word. Cash kept asking me if I was doing okay mentally throughout dinner.

Hello. We are in Nice, France now. Last night there was some soccer game and France won and then Paris erupted into violence. 500 people were arrested and two people died. I will never understand liking a sport so much that you decide to trash your city and murder people regardless of the outcome. If the Bears win, I mutter “cool.” If they lose, I mutter “fuck the Bears and the McCaskeys” and then I go about my day. Burning down my local Walgreens does not cross my mind.

We have been in Nice for a few hours and it is already Cash and Evie’s favorite European city so far. Cash likes being near the Mediterranean and Evie likes being near the Mediterranean and the dudes.

We took a high speed train this morning from Paris to Nice. The trip was 5 hours. The train was nice but the AC in our train car wasn’t working. I was still sweating from the stupid Eiffel Tower yesterday so that was not a welcome development.

Here are the kids outside our hotel.

We had an amazing dinner at a place called Bocca Mar. Kevin, our waiter, asked us to post a review online and mention him. To the three of you that are reading this, Kevin was an acceptable waiter who seemed to have decent hygiene. Also, I had a Vodka and Pschitt with my dinner. It did not taste like Pschitt, it was more like lemonade. We rent a car tomorrow and drive through Monaco to Rapallo.

We started today with the Catacombs. This is totally worth it. It is a long tunnel that leads to an Ossuary that contains the bones of 6 million Parisians. The only thing I kept thinking was that Caroline would have absolutely loved how organized the bones were. She probably would have used packing cubes, though. Regardless, somebody really took their time organizing all those bones.

Look at the bone organization! There must have been a Martha Stewart-type French lady or dude that organized these bones. They could have just put it in heaps but they are perfect. Evie is not on her phone, btw, she is listening to the audio tour.

Both kids thought it was super creepy and made me walk behind them the whole time. I agree with them. It was definitely creepy. I touched a skull and immediately I felt a weird pain in my abdomen but it turned out that it was just gas or something. Everyone said 5/5 stars.

We had lunch in a pizzeria, and then the kids wanted to see Notre Dame Cathedral. We took a cab there and the line to get in had to be over a mile long, so we got the hell out of there.

Then we went to the Eiffel Tower. After doing this today, I have EXTREMELY mixed feelings about the Eiffel Tower. As I have mentioned, I am not an expert on anything. When I booked the tour, there were no elevator tickets available, so I bought us climbing tickets to the second floor.

Do you know how high that is? I fucking don’t, but it is 1,667 stairs. Also, It was 82 degrees and 70% humidity. If the stairs went to the top, Cash would be writing my obituary on here. By the way, if the ground is the lobby, shouldn’t that be the third floor? The second floor should be the big platform underneath, which was the first floor. Why are they deceiving the public? I initially thought that going to the second floor would be a max climb of 40 feet. Second floors are usually under 40 feet, Not 1,667 steps. Fuckers.

The kids raced up and I got there about 10 minutes after them. When I got to the “second floor,” Cash immediately called me to ask if I made it. I was sweating profusely and dry heaving in the shadow of one of the iron beams so the sun would stop burning me, so I didn’t answer. I called him back 20 minutes later when I caught my breath. I didn’t even look at the view from the second floor because my main priority was not dying, and I think I was losing a few times. The picture above is the only one I got up there, and I don’t even care.

Then we went on a Cruise on the Seine River but I don’t remember much because I was trying to lower my body temperature the whole time with the breeze. The kids seemed to have fun on the cruise. This cruise lowered my body temperature but there was no bar. 4/5.