All roads lead to Rome, except the one my friend and I accidentally took, which led us to this godforsaken town called Palestrina, which we ended up in because we flew on a budget airline and landed in one of those secondary airports way the hell on the outskirts of the city you actually want to be in, and we were distracted because neither of us drives stick-shift well, but, in all fairness, Palestrina itself is fine, it’s more that James isn’t the kind of guy you want to go on vacation with because he can’t turn a series of mishaps into a fun adventure, so we spent the whole night in some overpriced pension not speaking to each other.