(CH)ICAGO ABROAD: Part III...WHEN in Rome...

Vittorio Monument..."wedding cake"

Yes where were we..let's see...ah yes, so remember I was going to meet my parents in Rome after their stay with us in Zurich. After hosting the parents for several days immediately after hosting the Chicago Girls (or should I say women...hmmm...ok girls) a couple days break was not needed but appreciated. In the spirit of not-so-full disclosure, I have a flight to Lisbon to catch in a few hours and as the "hausmann" I like to leave my house a certain way when I'm leaving, so this might be a bit rushed and all over the place. I know what you're thinking, your blogs are always rushed and all over the place, yes, but most times it is intentional and this time it will be unintentional. ALSO this submission may not be suitable for children under a certain age due to theft and comedic appearances by my parents and theft that initially is not funny but after a few weeks and no imminent danger is absolutely hilarious. Well I guess I think it is.

A little background...my parents love me and probably love my wife even more so because she puts up with and my crazyism. Hey if Sarah Palin can make up "refudiate" I can take creative license with Crazyism. You betcha! Anyways, I know they do, but sometimes, not all the times, there are situations where an individual has to show great compassion and concern, because the situation calls for it, but deep down or maybe not so deep down, the situation is actually pretty darn funny. Well I would put my parents travel, by train, through Italy, in that category. It's probably in the category of Odd Couple meets Jersey Shore Florence, meets Big Mama's house, meets the Griswalds. Maybe an example will help....Let's see there's the story when my teacher wouldn't let me use the restroom in the 3rd grade, there's the story where I decided to take on the No.1 Football player in the country and ended up with a concussion....oh wait this one is probably more appropriate for this environment...

I believe I was in the 7th or 8th grade and I was going to a 7 on 7 football clinic. Let's just say I was running late and I quickly gathered my cleats and met my ride outside. I get to the football clinic, change into one shoe and then suddenly realize, oh no, I grabbed the wrong left cleat. I'm not sure what happened or why I had a size 10 left shoe cleat (I've been a size 12 since the 6th grade) but here I was, a size 12, trying to fit into a size 10 cleat. Oh, did I mention, this was basically a try-out for a high school team I was thinking about attending. Can't just say, "Hey coach, I can't play today because I brought the wrong cleat" So I did what any 12-13 year old would, I jammed my foot in the cleat and was ready to play. And then, it went downhill from there. It was supposed to be a 3 hour 7-on-7 day and it turned out be a 7 hour day and then some guy stepped on my left foot and I tackled the poor guy. 7-on-7 is NO CONTACT. During the day, when I was on the sidelines, I took my shoe off a few times but the pain of putting it back on was unbearable so I just left it on. 7 hours, a shoe two sizes too small and a penalty for tackling an opponent later, I made it home and my mom and my aunt (basically my second mom) showed great concern for me and my foot but once they realized I was fine, they pretty much laughed for, let's see, the next 20 years...it still comes up and they're still laughing!

Well Well Well, so here we are. So team Adventure/Paranoia, my parents were off to Florence and then Rome, where they would meet up with Mr. Abroad. That's me just in case you're wondering. My wife is Mrs. Abroad. They were scheduled to arrive in Rome on Friday, around noon, so you can imagine my confusion, after landing at 3pm, checking into my hotel, and then walking to their Sofitel, to see them just checking in at 6pm! Side story...my hotel was in Campo Di Fiori which is code word for young tourist/exchange students/people that don't plan to sleep much. After checking in, please see what I stumbled upon just outside my room in the hotel common area.

3 in the afternoon...someone had a long night!

So I asked my mom, what the heck happened. Without her even answering, I could see the pain, frustration, confusion, weariness in eyes. FLASHBACK...

So I guess when they arrived in Florence, Adventure dad went a bit crazy with the tours. They did an all day tour of Cinque Terre via a local cruise, which is supposed to be absolutely beautiful country along the Italian Riviera, which coincidentally my wife just booked for us as well and my in-laws were there last year. They also found another all day tour to the Italian high end shops and managed to stop by a few wineries and shops to purchase wine and grappa. So naturally, if they didn't get to see very much of Florence, the time before their train left Florence for Rome at 11am would be that opportunity right? NOPE...adventure dad had some last minute plans. PISA! I think my old man's rationale can be summed up here. "We didn't get to see too much of Florence...we've paid too much money to be sitting still, we gotta keep moving!"

Remember when I decided to put on that shoe and THEN IT WENT ALL DOWN HILL. We're at that moment in this flashback.

Somehow they managed to book a last minute trip to Pisa to see the leaning tower. So the tower has been flawed and leaning for 900 years but still it's famous. A flaw, a architectural flaw, leaning because of a weak foundation. Pretty ridiculous if you ask Mr. Abroad. But anyhow, I guess somehow, it got lost in translation that the bus tour involved a 2 mile walk to the Tower and actually no tour of the tower. It'll take you by and to the tower but the tour didn't take them in the tower. Something about long lines and needing to get there real early in the morning to get tickets. So they couldn't go in the tower, what else can go wrong? On the 2 mile walk to the Leaning Tower, my parents were with a large group and some kind of skirmish ensued with some local Roma (what some people refer to as Gypsies) and the group and BAM just like that adventure dad was out of quite a few euro. Gone. Lost. Stolen. After the Pisa policia did a quick investigation for 8 minutes or so, no leads.

I think from that point on, my mom was pretty much done with Italy. And that was the look that I saw in my mom's eyes when I arrived. I just gave her a big hug and told her it would be ok. The next day we all laughed about the adventure and my mom vowed to never return to Pisa. My old man and I were alone at one point talking about the adventure and it went something like this...

ME: You know where things went wrong, right?
Dad: Yep.
ME: WHERE?
Dad: I just had to take that one extra trip to Pisa, probably should have gotten on that 11am train. You know what though, we lost some money, we had to buy new train tickets to Rome, and it cost us more money to ship 12 bottles of wine to the U.S then the actually wine cost but never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd be in Italy, doing what we're doing right now.

I guess that is worth quite a few euro.