#159 : CAT’S DIARY / THE BUSIEST TRIP EVER

HAPPY MAY, PEONIES. I need to do a short intro because this column is long as fuck. As I’m sure you are aware, I travel a lot. I impatiently country-hop. I SCHELP. Oh, God, the schlepping. I sleep in aisle economy seats with my knees up against the seat in front of me and a bandana pulled over my eyes. I wash my underwear in sinks. I do it all.

I use travel as something to look forward to—a shimmery prize in the distance that keeps me motivated as I write full-time from home. So when I sold my novel last fall, and knew I’d be editing the 400 page manuscript for months before finally submitting to Crown (MAY 15TH, BABY), I started planning a ‘spring break’ trip. This was back in November.

I came up with a signature Cat Marnell Deranged and Exhausting Plan to visit four new countries in one holiday. On April 15th, I’d take a $149 NORSE flight to Rome for two nights, because Vatican City is its own country, and I’d never been. From Rome, I’d fly Hungarian budget airline Wizz Air to Jeddah for $77 and experience Formula One at the Saudi Grand Prix. Then I’d take a short $120 flight to Kuwait City for one night, and do a class at Barry’s Kuwait. I’d fly another hour-long flight to the island nation of Bahrain, and stay one night there. To get home from the Middle East, I’d fly into Mumbai for a few days, where leopards prowl the city-center park. For my final flight home, I’d fly UAE airline Etithad from Mumbai to New York, with a fun 10-hour leave-the-airport daytime layover in Abu Dhabi. I’d be home April 26th, squeezing all this in under 11 days. Whew!

Well. You know what happened next.

To make a long story short, I wound up keeping my flight to Rome and keeping my flight home from India. Everything else in the middle got re-planned last minute. Ironically, due to unexpected scheduling delays with Crown, the trip wound up not being a vacation at all. It fell during of the most crucial editing periods of the entire multi-year process—so I had to take the printed-out manuscript with me and work like a fiend on it the whole time. On trains. On planes. In automobiles.

Did I still wound up spending time in wartime Middle East—just a six-hour drive from the fucking Straight of Hormuz? Of course I did! Such were the foibles of this strange trip, the busiest trip ever. I kept a detailed diary the whole time. Please note that entries were all written in the morning, describing the previous day’s activities. Enjoy!

I’m back in Roma after a few years, staying at my favorite kind of hotel, a little one practically on top of the central train station. I like Rome but have never loved it like I love Naples and Venice. I slept on and off on the red eye flight from New York—not bad. Norse is such a hilariously terrible airline. The stewards are hostile. I’d actually paid $40 for vegan dinner and there wasn’t even a tray. It was just a hot pocket thing in a cardboard box.

After landing, I took the pleasant Leonardo Express train into city center. At Roma Termini there was a thunderstorm and pouring rain and I was just standing there with two hundred people, watching. Everyone in the station was waiting it out. I was a six-minute walk from my hotel, so I just booked it, with all of my luggage. After a shower, I Ubered to see the Zaha Hadidbuilding here—the MAXXI contemporary art museum. The depressing taxidermied hanging Maurizio Cattelan horse was there and so was the fucking banana taped to the wall. The building itself was okay. It’s my 11th Zaha.

In the Uber, I’d passed the ornate National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art and spotted life-sized lion sculptures on the steps, so I walked thirty minutes to that. Big cats loose in cities was one of my old PCP fantasies, so I always need to investigate them.

It’s 6 AM and I’ve been up since 2 AM. I went to bed at…11? I don’t know why I woke up, but I didn’t want to take melatonin. At 4 AM I said “fuck it” and pulled out my manuscript. I went over my editor’s light edits and entered like 30 pages of changes. I was in a cranky mood as I did that. Now I am going to breakfast to drink coffee.