Day 7- Nice to Rapallo

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.