I like to think of myself as more of a traveler than a tourist, especially when it comes to Italy. After all, I seem to find myself here at least once a year. I know the little ins and outs: the first floor is marked “zero” not “one;” you go to the cashier and pay before ordering a coffee; and “bin” (shot for binario) is the word for track at the train station. I don’t have that feeling of disorientation being surrounded by people speaking Italian, in the way I have recently experienced with French and Spanish.
But for 24 hours, I was a tourist, plain a simple. My daughter Lizy and I are doing an Earthwatch expedition at an archeological dig in Tuscany. We decided to meet up for a day in Florence, before making our way to Piombino, the little town where we would be based. Due to a short circuit at Newark Airport, and a busted cable in the system, all East Coast air travel was cancelled on the day of my flight, so I arrived a day late, leaving us with only an afternoon to fill.
So what did we do? We shopped like maniacs, buying purses far more expensive than I ever would in the U.S., where my self-imposed limit is $20, and ate steak at Antica Trattoria da Tito, a wonderful trattoria, but nonetheless filled with tourists, who sign their names to the walls.
To get to Piombino, we had to change trains in Pisa, so of course, we had to take full advantage of that opportunity to visit the Leaning Tower, a tourist Mecca on steroids. There, we joined with thousands of other tourists taking goofy pictures of themselves pretending to hold up the Tower or to push it over.
I have to hand it to the young man who managed to find a pose that made it appear that the Tower was his private parts.
Final verdict? Being a snob means missing out on some great fun. I’m glad I was forced by circumstance to get off my high horse, and do the stuff that I would probably not consider otherwise. Turns out, it was unforgettable.
