Waiting in line. Who likes that? Especially when you’re on vacation. I still remember the long lines during Christmas week 2005 in Paris. Everywhere: to get into the Louvre, Notre Dame, the Musée d’Orsay. Non, merci. I’m happy to have already visited the first two many years ago. And the third? Well, I went back 30 minutes before closing, asked just to visit the gift shop, and was shown a side door that led to...the entire museum! I decided to just pick one painting (Manet’s Olympia) and spend my half hour with it. A recent visit to Rome found a line easily a mile long waiting to get into the Vatican Museums on the last Sunday of the month when it’s free. How free is it when you spend hours waiting on line? Above, the relatively short line to get into the Pastéis de Belém, the storied pastry shop in an outlying Lisbon neighborhood that claims to be the inventor of the pastel de nata. “Loucura” (madness), I said to the saleswoman. “Sempre” (always), her answer. Worth the wait.
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