In Italian class, most of the students were there because they had plans to travel to Italy within the year. We learned this, because at the beginning of each class we would each talk for a few minutes in Italian, telling the class something about ourselves or our lives. As each person described their upcoming trip or their past trip, we discovered we were all going to the same places, Rome, Cinque Terre, Lago de Como, Firenze, Tuscano, Almafi Coast and Venice, with some other tourist favorites thrown in. Pina, our instructor from Naples, would lament about all the beautiful places in Italy that we were not visiting and ask why we were all going to these specific places. Invariably our answers were always the same, to see the art, to see the scenery, to see a specific resort, etc. Pina would plead that everywhere in Italy was beautiful and we needn’t go only to these specific areas, but none of us listened.
When we planned our trip, we tried to mix it up, spending 4 or 5 days in one of the big cities where we would immerse ourselves in art and culture, followed by 4 or 5 in a more remote location where scenery or activity was the focus. At first, this worked for us, but we were still visiting the major tourist sites. As the weeks passed, we found, except for the art, what we were visiting was “Italy made for tourists”, not Italy. All the Italians we met were in the service industry, serving us. Cooks, waiters, shop keepers, hotel, hostel and BandB owners and operators; in short, everyone. We weren’t visiting Italy, we were visiting the Disneyland equivalent of Italy. We soon came to realize that all the tourists clambering to see Italy had completely removed Italy from Italy. In its place were trinket shops and restaurants posing as Italian restaurants, trying to be the Italy that the tourists wanted to see.
We first got this feeling in Florence, where the town is small compared to Rome, and the crowds of tourists vastly outnumber the locals, but we were so intent on seeing the art and historic churches and sites we hardly took notice. It was in Cinque Terre where everyone was American or German that we began to feel the reality of the situation. The support required to take care of the tourists had made the indigenous people abandon the very aspect that made Cinque Terre special-the 1000’s of miles of rock walls on steep hills that created the terraces of level ground to grow crops, especially grapes for wine. Today, many of the walls are collapsing and much of the grape crop is overgrown with underbrush and weeds as the farmers sit in gift shops making more money than they could on the rugged hillsides, and at a fraction of the labor. Rome was a big enough city that some elements of indigenous life continued in spite of the hoards of tourists and we were on Isola d’Elba before the crowds of summer tourists arrived, so the locals were out and about, comprising the majority of the population. It was Cinque Terre that we first began to understand what was happening.
Siena was an eye opener. When our BandB owner told us he had to move to the country and out of the building he was born in due to the crush of tourists and the laws enacted to support them we began to have our suspicions confirmed. We were sleeping in the room he was born in, right in the center of Siena, yet he could not live there anymore.
The reality got hidden a bit in Lago d’Como because it has always been a tourist area. The entire infrastructure has been tourism for 1000 years due to the lake, its recreational opportunities and the surrounding mountains. It was and still is a natural playground. The Dolomites were overrun by tourists, but like Lago d’Como, it has been that way for a long time, although the farmers still farm in the high country, and the tourists walk through their fields with packs on and trekking poles in hands as farmers drive tractors to cut and bale hay.
Venice is where it hit home. The city is dying. There are very few “residents” anymore, and they are leaving at the rate of a couple thousand a year, down from 90,000 to 30,000 and still shrinking. All that is left of the “city” is thousands of unoccupied buildings. Only the ground floors of these buildings have life, and they are all filled with shops selling items that appeal to tourists. A cruise down the “Grand Canal” after dark reveals that every building is empty in every floor but the bottom floor. It is a ghost city, only catering to us tourists that come to marvel at its magnificent canals. It is an aqua Disneyland. With no tax base, the city may soon have to charge an admission fee to pay for infrastructure and maintenance on all the empty buildings.
When we returned to Florence with Jeff, the crowds were bigger and the feeling of a huge amusement park became over powering. In the Tuscany hill towns surrounding the wedding site it was devastating. Every quaint town was precisely the same. Cobblestone streets and rock buildings all filled with tourist shops. Sure one town might specialize in cheese, or copper, or a specific type of wine, but each was just a ribbon of tourist shops selling the same stuff, town after town.
By the time Sally and I finished up in the Dolomites, we knew we were done with areas frequented by tourists. Our guide book, Rick Steves Italy 2017 was still useful, but now in an opposite way. If it was in his book, we knew we did not want to go there. In fact, he may be the most powerful person in the world in changing the cultures of towns around the world. Thousands upon thousands of people use his books to see the “sites” of Europe, and in the process, transform the towns from thriving, diverse cultures to mono economies based on cheap trinkets and uniform restaurants.
When at home planning the end of the trip, we agonized over whether to go south to the Almafi Coast, south of Naples. Everyone said it was amazing, so we booked two nights in Sorrento and made plans to ride the bus up and down the coast. But, after the Dolomites, we cancelled our BandB there and searched the map and Rick Steves for a place we could go that was not inundated with tourists. We settled on Anzio, 30 miles south of Rome on the coast, site of an allied invasion force in January 1944. Rick Steves does not even have the word “Anzio” in his book. Good.
Monday morning we lazily got up and packed, arriving at Termini station in Rome in time to catch our 10:40 am train to Anzio. As we stepped off the platform in Anzio and began our walk to our B&B we knew we had left “tourist Italy” and stepped closer to “Italy Italy”. The town was dirty, rundown and very poor looking. Most of the buildings were tagged with graffiti. It felt nothing like the towns we had visited or passed through. Our B&B was on a run down street-walls missing stucco and badly in need of repair and paint. Asphalt pavement that was more patches than pavement, tagging, litter, and untrimmed gardens. Is all of non-tourist Italy like this?
We found number 73 and rang the buzzer outside the gate. It immediately unlocked and we walked up the stairs to the house. A woman leaned her head out the 2nd floor window above us and beckoned us in through a door that was at that moment electronically unlocked. Up a floor we found a beautiful apartment with amazing home grown art on the walls and a spotless bedroom and bath with exquisite fixtures, the best we had seen on our trip. The land lady spoke no English, but once again my Italian class got us through the necessaries and we were soon putting on our swim suits and heading to the beach, just two streets away down a few sets of stairs.
We found a beach in front of what looked like an apartment building and quickly slithered into the water, counting on this being a public rather than private beach. While soaking, we met a man and his wife, in their late 60’s, from extreme northern, French speaking Italy who come every year to this beach and his vacation apartment in the building we were swimming in front of. He said his wife had bought him an 18’ Hobie Cat last season and wanted to know if I would help him sail it tomorrow. Yes! We set 10:00 am as the time to meet him here at this beach and we would go from there. Sally expressed concern over the forecast for strong winds between 10 and 3 tomorrow, but we made plans anyway and parted company.
We walked down the beach toward Anzio. We stopped at a seaside cafe for lunch. Soon we continued our walk and were in town. It was deserted. Seemed like a ghost town. All the shops were closed. Only a few people on the street. We watched the commercial fishing boats come in and sell their meager catch of fish and octopus dockside to a few customers, then wandered back through town and up to our B&B. It was very hot (93ยบ) and muggy. We showered, then took a nap.
About 6:30 pm we wandered back out to town to look for dinner. We walked down the street to town, arriving about 7:15 pm. The transformation was startling. The streets were packed with people. All the stores were open. The central piazza in front of the church was packed with kids playing around the fountain. The benches were full of women and men talking. The restaurants packed. It appears the locals don’t like the midday heat any more than we do.
We had pizza at a busy outdoor pizzeria, then sat near the fountain for an hour watching people and enjoying the evening. We headed back to our room as darkness came. It was nice to be in Anzio.
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