Being Pretty

(from my Let's Go blog)

This is one of those delicate topics where I’ll have to tread the line between vanity and annoyingly overcompensating humility. But in Italy, I am really pretty.

Save your protestations, loyal friends who will insist that I am pretty at home too. Reserve your judgment, skeptical strangers eyeballing my mugshot. I know what league I’m in at home. And I’ve just been bumped up a notch.

It’s not simply run-of-the-mill flirting I’m talking about. That I could chalk up to Italian men being infinitely more forward than Harvard men. Hell, glaciers are more forward than Harvard men.

No, it’s the freebies that show I’m really punching above my weight. The old men at Trattoria Mario who flagged the waitress to have me seated at their table and were disappointed when I returned with my prettier-by-American-standards girlfriends. My inability to do efficient nightlife research because the free drinks offered at each establishment leave me stumbling door to door like the Prophet Elijah. The museum guard who asked me out minutes after the other guard in the gallery did likewise, sparking a minor controversy regarding docent decency.

I guess it comes from looking sorta Italian, but not quite. My European friends tell me that Jewish looks are “exotic” overseas. This girl from NY never counted her hook nose as an asset before and certainly wouldn’t have expected it to go over any different in a former Axis power, but shows what she knows. Get it, nose/knows? Okay, they still don’t love my Jewish father sense of humor, but I’m working on it.

Last week, I latched on to a couple American guys whose companionship I had to earn the old-fashioned way – jeez, peanut gallery, I mean through mutual interests and bad jokes – and their presence dried up the attention. Honestly, it was a relief to go back to being conspicuous only for the normal reason: talking too loudly.

So it was a shock all over again today when the attention resumed. I stepped under the awning of a restaurant to avoid a sudden downpour, and a man came out of the restaurant to hail a taxi.

“Come with me,” he said. We had not yet exchanged a word.

“What?”

“I am going to my other restaurant by the Duomo. I own this one, and a couple others.”

“Um.”

“Come, we will have cappuccino at the other place, and then we’ll come back here and have lunch.”

See? This does not happen to me at home. And at home I don’t even consider getting in taxis with complete strangers. But I was hungry. And, well, it was raining.

So what the hell. Might as well enjoy it while it lasts. I got in the cab.

Read more: http://www.letsgo.com/article/2567-being-pretty#ixzz17VHgcp7V

The good parts

(from my Let's Go blog)

You really can't complain about this job. I don't mean that there's nothing to complain about. I'm working 14 hour days, my knees, hips, and back scream in protest every time I force them to walk up and down the city in search of yet another poorly-signposted hotel, and the Renaissance is getting really, really old. I got my complaints.

I mean I literally cannot complain about my job. Because I will get punched in the face.

Metaphorically, that is. No one has yet punched me. But mentioning any of the negatives—the hours, the stress, the loneliness, the physical test—generally results in the reaction you are probably having right now: "Oh, you poooor baby. Are they making you eat too many cannolis? Wah wah, your life is soooo hard."

And they have a point. Because the crappy parts are not nearly so crappy as the awesome parts are awesome. And when you're belting
"O Mio Bambino Caro" in unison in the basement of a tiny Florentine trattoria with a dozen opera students and a half dozen old Italian men, or standing on the balcony of a 12th century hilltop monastery at dawn to watch the sun rise on the city below, this job ain't half bad.

Read more: http://www.letsgo.com/article/2399-the-good-parts#ixzz17VI7kDyx

Sphenisciphobia

(from my Let's Go blog)

I understand now why people are afraid of nuns.

When the lady at the San Gimignano tourist office told me about the convent's dorms, I got my fingers ready to give this find a coveted Let's Go thumbs-up. It took me three visits to actually find a nun at the desk, and a little while longer for her to understand my rote-memorized Italian for "may I have a look around?" Eventually, she waved me upstairs, and I got to see a bit of convent life.

I found a long hallway of empty, sparse dorm rooms adorned with surprisingly tasteful Virgins. Not bad, not bad. I took a different staircase down and emerged in another hall of dorms - these clearly inhabited by persons of the cloth. Outside was a gorgeous stone courtyard with a huge old well, still in operation. I suspected that I had ventured out of bounds, but the place was empty. So I had a poke around.

Now, I am a big fan of trespassing. Sure, sometimes you get yelled at. But sometimes you make a great find. This time, I'd found a fully operational 12th-century Italian convent.

There was a chapel, of course. I bumped my head on the ceiling going in - 12th-century nuns were short - and discovered the entrance to the cloister. The convent is on the edge of San Gimignano, a mountaintop city, and to my amazement, the cloister had a postcard-perfect view of the city center's towers.

Just then the sky rumbled. And before you could say "one Mississippi" a lightning bolt had brightened the dark sky. And as every grade schooler knows, that means the storm is here. I ducked back into the convent by another door, just as a burst of sharp rain came tumbling out of the sky. At this point, I had no idea where in the apparently immense convent I was, but that wasn't going to stop me from continuing my exploration. Thunder shook the walls. A line of elderly nuns passed by in habits, probably to go sing "My Favorite Things" with the Reverend Mother, but that wasn't going to stop me either. Then one of them noticed me.

So, turns out trespassing is less fun when you can't speak the language. Normally, when an enormous old nun asks me what I'm doing, I smile and make up some convincing story, probably flashing one of my several persuasive ID cards for good measure. It worked on the monk at Westminster Abbey who put me on the list for Darwin's birthday party last year. But this nun? This nun questioned me in Italian. And I could respond with nothing better than, "Huh?"

And then I am being dragged - literally dragged, by the arm - through the convent by a very large, very angry nun shouting at me in rapid Italian. I catch words like "privato" and "vietato" but am at a loss to respond, and it doesn't seem like a great time to pull out the press pass. She yanks me all the way to the front gate. With a good shove, I am thrown out of the convent and into the rain.

I meant no offense. Nun: taken.

Read more: http://www.letsgo.com/article/2644-sphenisciphobia#ixzz17VGv02ws