Ron Judd on being an American traveling in Italy
My favorite newspaperman is back in town! He's been gone for a couple of months - he is a sports/outdoors writer for the Seattle Times and boy is he funny!! He always goes to the Olympics and writes off-the-wall stories about his experiences, not something that anyone else is ever going to write. He's been touring around Italy since the Olympics ended a month ago.
Needless to say, this further shows why most everyone thought we were English. We did NOT wear parkas and always were in dark clothes. And we carried umbrellas in the rain (Steve's was a 5 Euro one, mine was a more expensive dusty rose colored umbrella with a wooden duck painted handle from Florence).
Read on and enjoy!!
Thursday, March 23, 2006
Ron Judd
I wear a parka — I am an American
Pardon the interruption.
The good news — or bad, depending on your particular taste for what regularly appears in this space — is that we're finally back, relatively unscathed, from a five-week-plus jaunt around Italy, where, as at least seven or eight of you NBC watchers noticed, a Winter Olympics took place last month.
Thank you all for watching and reading and not wretching at the mere mention of those two most frightening of all Winter Olympic words — "ice dancing."
Once the flame was snuffed, a small but hardy traveling group consisting primarily of yours truly, a California colleague and close friends Gail and Brute Force of Edmonds spent another couple of weeks taking the rest of Italy by storm — well, at least by train. Along the way, we learned some important things about travel in the fabled boot nation.
At the risk of offending PBS Pledge Drive Prince Rick Steves and other career-travel gurus, we offer up the following fresh wisdom pearls for future Euro-travel victims:
• First, abandon any pretense of pretending you're not a North American. They'll spot you coming a half a kilometer away. Reason: very likely, your brightly colored waterproof/breathable parka.
Trust us on this one: Nobody in Italy outside the Alps ever wears a rain parka in public.
In Florence, for example, the residents will go out and face even the wettest, coldest, windiest (think: Bellingham) spring day wearing wool or leather (dark colors only). This is done for three primary reasons: 1) It looks cool. 2) It looks cool. And 3) there's no reason to parka up if you can, instead, wield a cheap umbrella that has the added advantage of serving as an excellent eye-poker-outer while walking down narrow city streets.
Result: After a day of rain, the entire populace of a major Italian city will look and smell exactly like a blind, wet, sheep dog.
Not that there's anything wrong with that, a local will explain to you, in pretty good English, having ID'd you as a foreigner a half-hour before by virtue of your parka, which might as well be a giant, flashing "WARNING: APPROACHING AMERICAN" neon sign atop your head.
• Hang onto your wallet. Just like many other places in the world, pickpockets are very active on Italian public transportation. On our trip, I was the only one who didn't lose a wallet or see one mysteriously disappear. However, I made up for that near the end of the journey by taking it upon myself to lose someone else's — my friend Emjay's, which I apparently dumped out on a public street while moving goods from the front seat to the backseat of a rental car.
• If you do plan to lose your wallet, lose it in Rapallo. Just before departing for Milan and a plane home, Emjay and I decided to check at the police station in Rapallo, the Mediterranean coastal town where I had most likely lost it in the first place.
After a half-day cop-station search adventure — one that took us to a number of interesting unexpected destinations, including what's best described as a high-rise burial crypt — we found said Polizia hideout.
And there, in a desk drawer in a back room, we discovered, to our shock and amazement, Emjay's wallet — with cash, credit cards and other documents completely untouched.
An old man had found it on the street and turned it into a cop, an officer told us. Another decent soul unwittingly strikes a blow for international diplomacy.
• No, we don't have any more Turin chocolate. But thanks for asking.
• Maintain proper art-gallery decorum at all times: You never know who's watching.
One of the hazards of covering the Olympics is that when they end, every journalist in the world packs up his/her dirty laundry and heads to one of the tourist spots of the host nation.
One day in Florence, the smallness of the world came crashing home, anyway. Part of our group was in the Uffizi Gallery, staring with admiration at some treasure such as Botticelli's "Birth of Venus," when a large head suddenly blocked the view. Attached to it was the body of a certain very tall sports columnist from another Seattle newspaper.
Sheez. Talk about a hair in your pasta.
We did the only honorable thing — slapped him on the back and issued warm greetings while stealing his wallet.
• Be prepared to never look at a frozen pizza, soft-serve ice cream, cafeteria-style risotto or a cliffside sunset the same way again, ever.
Whether you're talking about art, culture, architecture, gelato or just plain, old-fashioned warm memories, Italy is a treasure. See it before your eyes and taste buds get any older and duller.
Ron Judd's Trail Mix column appears here Thursdays. To contact him: 206-464-8280 or rjudd@seattletimes.com.
Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company
Needless to say, this further shows why most everyone thought we were English. We did NOT wear parkas and always were in dark clothes. And we carried umbrellas in the rain (Steve's was a 5 Euro one, mine was a more expensive dusty rose colored umbrella with a wooden duck painted handle from Florence).
Read on and enjoy!!
Thursday, March 23, 2006
Ron Judd
I wear a parka — I am an American
Pardon the interruption.
The good news — or bad, depending on your particular taste for what regularly appears in this space — is that we're finally back, relatively unscathed, from a five-week-plus jaunt around Italy, where, as at least seven or eight of you NBC watchers noticed, a Winter Olympics took place last month.
Thank you all for watching and reading and not wretching at the mere mention of those two most frightening of all Winter Olympic words — "ice dancing."
Once the flame was snuffed, a small but hardy traveling group consisting primarily of yours truly, a California colleague and close friends Gail and Brute Force of Edmonds spent another couple of weeks taking the rest of Italy by storm — well, at least by train. Along the way, we learned some important things about travel in the fabled boot nation.
At the risk of offending PBS Pledge Drive Prince Rick Steves and other career-travel gurus, we offer up the following fresh wisdom pearls for future Euro-travel victims:
• First, abandon any pretense of pretending you're not a North American. They'll spot you coming a half a kilometer away. Reason: very likely, your brightly colored waterproof/breathable parka.
Trust us on this one: Nobody in Italy outside the Alps ever wears a rain parka in public.
In Florence, for example, the residents will go out and face even the wettest, coldest, windiest (think: Bellingham) spring day wearing wool or leather (dark colors only). This is done for three primary reasons: 1) It looks cool. 2) It looks cool. And 3) there's no reason to parka up if you can, instead, wield a cheap umbrella that has the added advantage of serving as an excellent eye-poker-outer while walking down narrow city streets.
Result: After a day of rain, the entire populace of a major Italian city will look and smell exactly like a blind, wet, sheep dog.
Not that there's anything wrong with that, a local will explain to you, in pretty good English, having ID'd you as a foreigner a half-hour before by virtue of your parka, which might as well be a giant, flashing "WARNING: APPROACHING AMERICAN" neon sign atop your head.
• Hang onto your wallet. Just like many other places in the world, pickpockets are very active on Italian public transportation. On our trip, I was the only one who didn't lose a wallet or see one mysteriously disappear. However, I made up for that near the end of the journey by taking it upon myself to lose someone else's — my friend Emjay's, which I apparently dumped out on a public street while moving goods from the front seat to the backseat of a rental car.
• If you do plan to lose your wallet, lose it in Rapallo. Just before departing for Milan and a plane home, Emjay and I decided to check at the police station in Rapallo, the Mediterranean coastal town where I had most likely lost it in the first place.
After a half-day cop-station search adventure — one that took us to a number of interesting unexpected destinations, including what's best described as a high-rise burial crypt — we found said Polizia hideout.
And there, in a desk drawer in a back room, we discovered, to our shock and amazement, Emjay's wallet — with cash, credit cards and other documents completely untouched.
An old man had found it on the street and turned it into a cop, an officer told us. Another decent soul unwittingly strikes a blow for international diplomacy.
• No, we don't have any more Turin chocolate. But thanks for asking.
• Maintain proper art-gallery decorum at all times: You never know who's watching.
One of the hazards of covering the Olympics is that when they end, every journalist in the world packs up his/her dirty laundry and heads to one of the tourist spots of the host nation.
One day in Florence, the smallness of the world came crashing home, anyway. Part of our group was in the Uffizi Gallery, staring with admiration at some treasure such as Botticelli's "Birth of Venus," when a large head suddenly blocked the view. Attached to it was the body of a certain very tall sports columnist from another Seattle newspaper.
Sheez. Talk about a hair in your pasta.
We did the only honorable thing — slapped him on the back and issued warm greetings while stealing his wallet.
• Be prepared to never look at a frozen pizza, soft-serve ice cream, cafeteria-style risotto or a cliffside sunset the same way again, ever.
Whether you're talking about art, culture, architecture, gelato or just plain, old-fashioned warm memories, Italy is a treasure. See it before your eyes and taste buds get any older and duller.
Ron Judd's Trail Mix column appears here Thursdays. To contact him: 206-464-8280 or rjudd@seattletimes.com.
Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company
posted by Wendy Hughes-Jelen @ 9:48 PM
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