Travel Bug Robert
Finding the funny in the world.

A pint of beer, but which one? Ireland’s debate rages on.

Why can’t kids act like adults when traveling?

I like children.  If raised correctly, they can be downright adorable.  But man, you get a hundred of them together on an out-of-state field trip, one involving a hotel with a pool and phones that can call other rooms for free, and I don’t care how well behaved those kids usually are, they are gonna flip.  I know they will, because I flipped when I was a kid.  For a child of 7-14, going on an extended field trip that crosses state lines is just about as good as it can get.  It’s like the most awesome sleepaway camp ever, which is the only experience that could even come close to a multi-day field trip’s level of awesomeness.  Both symbolize freedom, something kids rarely get to have.  You’re away from your parents, away from your hometown, and adults are actually treating you like an adult.  But a trip is even better than camp, because instead of having to make new friends with people you’ll never see after that summer, you get to hang out with your best friends from school.  And you’re in a really cool city with tons of fun stuff to do.  Oh, and did I mention you’re staying in a hotel with a pool?

So when I was in Washington D.C, I understood why the kids in matching baseball hats were excited.  But that didn’t change the fact I was annoyed to see them.  Let me tell you something, reading the Declaration of Independence at the National Archives loses some of its majesty when teenage girls are loudly whispering behind you about how cute Brett is.  The somberness of looking at the Vietnam Wall vanishes when a middle schooler impresses his friends by sliding down the walkway ramp post-rain storm.  And in D.C., these roaming gangs of children are everywhere.  The National Mall is full of them, invading every Smithsonian museum possible, even the lame ones you visit in hopes of escaping the crowds.

I’ve wrangled some kids in my day.  It’s not fun.  I worked as a camp counselor and was assigned a group of ten kindergarteners to supervise on our camp’s field trip to Navy Pier in Chicago.  My legs were twice as long as theirs, and yet they still managed to escape me constantly.  By the end of the day, I had seen all of Navy Pier, but mostly as a blur while I ran to grab kids before they fell in Lake Michigan.

Funny enough, my Fifth Grade Trip was to Navy Pier, where my twelve-year-old self kept telling our group leader to stop so I could take pictures with my first ever girlfriend.  I guess karma takes a while to catch up with you.

Maybe they’re just a very trusting country?

When I visited Rio, I expected to see a lot of bikinis.  That’s what I was promised from years of stereotypes telling me that every woman in Rio wears a bikini year round.  They wear one to the beach, to the office, when they’re cooking dinner.  When their alarm clock rings in the morning, they get out of bed and they’re already dressed, because they sleep in a bikini.  Just all bikinis, all the time.  Apparently, that’s not how Rio works.  Brazilian women have more in their closets than a color spectrum of bikinis.   If I were still a kid, fresh from a whisper session about Brazilian babes, I would be heartbroken.  Deep down, though, I knew the legend couldn’t be true.  I still did manage to see a few bikini-clad women, though, and I was visiting during their winter season.  So maybe there is some truth to it, just enough to keep the legend alive.

But this post isn’t about attractive Brazilian women in bikinis.  If it were, it would probably get a lot more views.  No, dear reader, this post is about thievery in Rio.  The ugly side of Rio.  The Rio they don’t want you to know about.  Rio’s got some crime going on, and it’s something they’re trying to clean up before the city hosts the World Cup and Olympics (side note: they’re hosting both the World Cup and the Olympics.  Now’s the time to own a hotel in Rio.)  While walking down a heavily trafficked street during the day, a friend of mine helped a man on the street and literally got “marked” with a white sticker on his back when the stranger hugged him.  He later found out the sticker was a signal to muggers that he was a tourist and had money.  Luckily, a local told him to take off the sticker before he got mugged.  So be wary of overly grateful, hugging strangers.  They could rob you or hurt you.  “Don’t hug strangers”–that’s just good advice in general.  I’m all for hugging, and I’m all for meeting new people, but getting a hug from a guy I just met on the street, some red flags would go up.

Is this to say you shouldn’t visit Rio?  No, of course not.  Just be careful.  And when visiting Rio, hang your most expensive possessions from high, hard to reach places.

Rebels.

Climbing the Duomo in Florence is exhausting.  There are a lot of stairs in that place.  And even though it’s a cathedral–a sacred place of worship for millions of people a year–some whippersnappers decided to graffiti it up.  Well, not the pretty part of the Duomo; only the walls leading up to the pretty part.  I have to say, I’m impressed with their rebellious actions.  I don’t condone it, but I’m impressed.  Look at where they chose to write on the wall–right next to a sign that says “don’t write on the walls.”  That takes some guts.  There really aren’t any guards watching you on your climb up to the top, but morally that takes some guts.  These guys (or girls–it could be girls.  I’m very egalitarian in my criminal judgements), they know that they’re doing something naughty.  I guess that’s the thrill, though, right?  The thrill of maybe getting caught while ignoring a very sensible rule.   I’m not a risk taker myself.  I get worried if I clink a glass too loudly in a restaurant.  I don’t want to bother the other customers.  So this “livin’ on the edge” business doesn’t jive with me.

I will say, though, I do want to be remembered like these people.  Let’s be serious, that’s really why someone writes their name on a wall.  Maybe some will get a fun little adrenaline jolt looking over their shoulder as they Sharpie their name and date onto a Renaissance-era church, but most are writing their name on the wall so a hundred years from now, somebody will know they were there and that they existed.  It’s the whole “flag on the moon” complex.  We already made it to the moon, NASA.  Why waste a perfectly good American flag on a place in the universe that no one will ever see but us?

When I was a kid, they were putting in a new cement sidewalk, and when the workers had gone home and left it to dry, I rode through on my bike so my tracks could remain there forever, literally cemented in time (I guess I was a bit of a rebel as a kid).  The next day, I went back and discovered they re-cemented the sidewalk, erasing all proof that my bike or me had ever been there.

I guess what I’m saying to these taggers is, what if the Duomo buys a can of paint?

Robert Gets on a Plane to South America

Miami International Airport is one heck of a place.  It’s big enough to have those monorails to transport you to gates farther down the terminal.  Those monorails are great.  I like to pretend I’m in Disney World whenever I’m on one.  Of course, I’m disappointed when the doors open and I see an airport terminal, but for a few fleeting seconds, I forget where I am.  I think that’s a medical condition, actually.

Another perk of MIA: it’s really clean.  I didn’t think about it too much when I was there, but in hindsight, those janitors liberally applied elbow grease to those floors.

I think I like Miami’s airport so much because this place would be my gateway to South America.  I had never been south of the Equator before, so this was a pretty big trip for me.  By the time I recorded this video, I had already flown from LA to Miami for a good five hours and was about to board another plane that would be close to nine hours of flying, but at this moment, I was too excited to really think about exhaustion.