In the cities I generally became highly agitated by the layers and people that each place revealed. I've never been a very publicly aggressive person, but I discovered very quickly I needed to take control of myself and do a complete reversal on my normal habits in order to survive. I think the most difficult part for me was the lack of order, specifically when it came to standing in lines. I had this innocent notion that people just automatically stay in their spot when in a line, and that social etiquette would frown upon cutting in front of someone else. Ah, how innocence is so quickly slapped in the face with the sulfur scent of Italian reality.
I was strangely depressed by the Colosseum. I was in love with what the Galleria Borghese offered and gave me (I wanted to touch the Bernini sculptures so bad). Standing on top Duomo in Milan was an experience that would be hard to top. Pisa was, in all honesty, a joke to me. The Vatican was bigger and more grand than I could have imagined. This mingled with the feeling that these famous sites so many people flocked to, were a strange kitsch-version of themselves—their purpose, to provide a trophy to hang on one's wall with a plaque reading, "I was there."
