Morning in Firenze. The cobblestone streets are wet from a light rain. The sun is not yet up.

The Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore stands in the distance, red tile roof obscured by a mist which hangs over town like a damp washrag.

I leave my inn, looking for coffee and breakfast. I’ve been in Italy for weeks now—and I never thought I’d say this—but I’m sick of bread.

I pass a homeless man on the corner. He is sleeping at the foot of a basilica, on the cobblestones. A dog is curled up beside him. They are both wet. Both shivering.

Next, I see two nuns approach the man. Their habits are dark and nontraditional. The nuns look youngish. Maybe mid-forties.

One nun stoops to speak to the man. And I cannot help but watch them. I’m thinking to myself, “Now here is something you don’t see every day.” A nun and a beggar. It’s like the flannel boards from Sunday school class, only in real-time.

Maybe the nun is asking whether the man

is all right. Maybe she is offering to help him, or buy him a sandwich. Or whatever.

She stays with him for a while, as crowds of students meander past them.

There are students everywhere here in Florence. You can tell they are students because they are always surrounded by a giant cloud of vape fog. Almost all young people vape in Italy. It must be an unwritten law. If you are young; you vape.

The air is cough-syrup scented miasma. It’s almost enough to make you miss the days when people smoked cigarettes. Almost.

But these children are young and happy, and full of wonderful plans for their lives. Just seeing them makes me feel a little excited somehow. Also, all these Italian students have more fashion sense in their pinky toes than an entire Kardashian family reunion.

Speaking of fashion. Recently, a…

She was cool. That was my initial thought when I first met her. She was just cool.

It wasn’t her milk-chocolate hair. Or her Poarch Creek skin. Or her quirky mannerisms. Or her loud, Alabamian voice. Or the way she spoke, like everything she said carried the same level of importance as, say, national security.

It wasn’t her filthy ‘89 Nissan Altima. Her car was disgusting. Before you crawled inside, you wanted to make sure you were current on all your shots. Her backseat was littered in culinary school textbooks, mostly with French titles. Fleetwood Mac was in the cassette player. There was a church key in the ashtray.

It wasn’t that she was bossy—I have a thing for bossy women. It wasn’t that she was a tomboy—I have a thing for tomboys. It wasn’t that she truly believed she could beat me at arm wrestling, and then proceeded to do so.

It wasn’t that she knew all the words to Joe Diffie’s “Pickup Man,” or that she could clear a dance floor whenever they played

“Watermelon Crawl.”

It wasn’t the way that dogs and children always followed her around. And it wasn’t the way she smelled without perfume; a sweet smell, mixed with a little sweat.

It wasn’t the way she listened intently when someone spoke, with a slightly tensed brow, like she was REALLY listening. Either that, or she was trying to solve the Riemann Hypothesis.

It wasn’t the way she laughed too much. Or the way she was always cracking jokes. Or that she had her black belt in sarcasm. Or the way we could spend 138 hours in a car together, without one serious word being spoken between us.

Or the way she chewed her nails. Or the way she never had to shave her legs because she is the only human being I’ve ever known who was devoid of arm and leg hair.

It wasn’t…

There are many perks to being a professional writer. Namely, whenever you are at a swanky cocktail party and you tell people what you do for a living, they will smile and reply by giving you their drink order.

But sometimes as a writer, you actually get to do exciting things that other citizens never get the opportunity to do. Cleaning public toilets is only one example.

Another example would be piloting a gondola down the Canale Orfanello in Venice. Which I did.

Matteo was my gondolier today. He was a youngish middle-aged guy, fit, wearing a navy-and-white striped shirt and tennis shoes. He has been operating a gondola in Venice for 22 years.

He stood at the stern of his boat, constantly pumping an oar in the blue-green water of the canal, and he asked what I did for a living.

So I told him. Then I asked how he came to his current profession.

“It was my uncle who first suggest me to try this job,” said Matteo

in broken English. “I was 17 when I first try to use the oar, and I think to myself, ‘How hard can it really be?’”

The answer was: hard. For many reasons.

First off, the Gondola is a temperamental, flat-bottomed boat whose design took 800 years to perfect. It is a giant asymmetrical banana, which makes it responsive, quick, and the boat is as sensitive as a gassy toddler.

The slightest movement aboard a gondola affects the whole ship. If you clear your throat on a gondola, everyone onboard feels it.

Secondly, the single oar that propels the boat, in a sculling manner, also serves as a rudder. Sort of like a fish flapping its tail. Learning to use the oar takes some a lifetime. Many never get it and abandon their apprenticeship.

“It take me seven years just to learn to use this oar. It never just ‘clicks’ in…

It is after dark when our train pulls into Stazione di Venezia Santa Lucia. We step off the railcar in Venice, onto a platform that is empty, except for a few singing crickets and railway employees on smoke break.

We made a few friends from Nebraska on the train. They are mid-seventies. Just a few Americans, helping each other through a foreign land.

We all descend the terminal steps. Our backpacks sit heavy upon our backs, akin to carrying 3-year-olds across Europe. Our bodies are cramped and sore. We have been hopping trains all day like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Dorks.

But we all soon forget our misery. Because as we exit the station, we are greeted by incredible streetlights.

“Wow,” say our friends from Nebraska.

“Wow,” say we Alabamians.

The street lights in Venice are not like American lights. In the US, outdoor public spaces largely adhere to a strict design style that could be loosely defined as Adult Correctional Facility. The buzzing fluorescent lights found in, say, a Walmart

parking lot, glow harshly white, bringing to mind your last appendectomy.

Whereas the streetlights in Venice are the color or flickering torches. Orange light is reflected in the mirrored water, Van Gogh-like, rippling beneath city sidewalks.

Then, a gondola passes beneath us. The gondolier is a young man, scrawny, working the stern of his flat-bottomed boat, singing for the tourists. The song he sings, a capella, is “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” by Meatloaf.

Not exactly what you’d expect from your typical Venetian, but hey.

We all walk around the city. There are ornate archway bridges everywhere—435 bridges to be exact. Venice is a town made up of 118 islands, so there are lots of bridges. Each bridge has a name. And most bridges predate the Boston Tea Party.

The bridge we are standing on, for example, is Ponte de Rialto, built in 1173.

And all this history…

It was a small ristorante. About the size of a walk-in closet, only with less legroom. It was raining in small-town Italy. The slick, cobbled streets looked like a shiny lawsuit waiting to happen.

The older woman welcomed us into her place of business. She had no other customers today because of the weather.

“No tourists ever visit in the rain,” she said.

She motioned for us to come in by saying, “Prego, prego.”

They say “prego” a lot over here. They say it more than “grazie.” More than you’d expect.

Prego means “you are welcome,” technically. But it can also mean other things, such as “after you,” and “please, come in,” “how may I help you?” and “would you like mass amounts of carbohydrates?” In short, Prego sort of means “I care about you.” Even if only for right now. Prego.

The woman had a framed picture of a young woman on the counter. The image had flowers adorning the frame and glass votives flickering beside it.

The woman noticed me looking at the photo.

“She die last year,” the woman said.

“She was my—how you say in English? My daughter.”

I don’t ask how her daughter passed because (a) it’s none of my business, and (b) our communication is limited. I am a big, dumb, redhead American who only knows how to say “grazie” and “prego” and other such words from “The Godfather.”

We have a seat in the back of the restaurant.

“You want gnocchi?” the woman asks us.

“Gnocchi?”

“Si. I just a’cook the gnocchi this morning.” Then she adds, “Is a’fresh.”

We haven’t even looked at a menu but there’s no need. It’s raining. This woman has made gnocchi. If we don’t eat it, odds are nobody today will. Besides, it is a’fresh.

“Grazie,” I say.

“Prego.”

Soon, we have two ginormous bowls of hot gnocchi. The steam hits our faces, the smell of fresh…

We are waiting for a bus in Positano. We are an hour away from our hotel, with no other way of getting back.

We’ve been at this bus stop for a while. Namely, because the buses in Italy run on a very structured system known as the “We have no idea what the hell we’re doing” system.

This is a highly complex administrative system, with lots of moving parts. A system which might have originated here during Ancient Roman times. This particular bureaucratic system has influenced many classic modern managerial systems that are still in use today, such as the Customer Service System, the Commercial Airline System, and US Congress.

Allow me to explain:

Let’s say you want to take a bus somewhere in Italy. The first thing you would do under this system—and this is just common sense, really—is visit the cigarette shop.

Because that’s where you buy bus tickets in Italy. The tabaccheria. It’s not clear why you buy tickets at the local vape pen dispensary instead of, for example, the

bus station. But that is the system. If you were to visit the bus station to purchase tickets, the attendants would just laugh at you until their noses bled.

No. You must go to the tabaccheria, which also sells lottery tickets and coloring books, and is a government authorized tax warehouse legally allowed to sell tobacco.

This is not a cheerful place to visit inasmuch as strict tobacco control laws dictate that all product packaging must be covered in 65 percent pictorial warnings.

These warnings are disturbingly graphic images intended to discourage smoking. Thus, all cartons are covered with morbid photos of people coughing up blood, dying infants, blackened lungs, patients attached to respirators, toothless mouths, and actual dead persons in caskets.

These packages sit directly behind your average Italian shop clerk, who stands before a giant wall of death imagery, smiling at you, ready to help…

I am in a taxi being driven by a man with a deathwish. We are doing 75 mph on a treacherous beach cliff. The driver keeps glancing at my wife and me in the rear view mirror, smiling, speaking semi automatic-fire Italian.

We have no idea what he’s saying, but he keeps giving us the “okay” sign.

We don’t know how to respond, and we don’t want to be rude, so we flash him “okay” signs in return. Which is a mistake, we discover. Because “okay” signs only make him drive faster.

Currently, we are motoring along on the island of Capri, which is nestled in the Gulf of Napoli, about nine nautical miles from the Middle of The Entire Ocean. All four horizons are nothing but gulf. We are a long way from civilization.

Below our cab is the Tyrrhenian Sea. Above us, limestone crags called “sea stacks” which all look like mountains growing out of the water.

The streets on Capri are impossibly narrow. Barely big enough for a single

car. And yet these single-lane highways are crowded with homicidal taxi drivers and transfer trucks who refuse to share the road.

Whenever buses come barreling down the mountain at us, our driver plays a game of chicken with each oncoming vehicle while keeping one finger on the wheel and hurling insults out the window about the motorist’s mother.

Meantime, we in the backseat close our eyes, grip the overhead safety bars, and swear like commercial equipment operators.

Our car has already sideswiped two vehicles and four guardrails. We just grazed another tour bus with a loud crunch as I am writing this. My wife and I are immediately tossed around in the backseat like marbles in a Folgers can. Our backpacks go flying. Our phones are airborne.

The driver flashes us the “okay” sign.

And because we descend from polite, soft spoken American fundamentalists who do not know…

The train to Pompeii was packed tighter than bark on a tree. The doors slid open and 3,186 passengers almost fell out.

“Tutti a bordo!” shouted the attendant.

A few of us American tourists looked at each other. “What’s that mean?”

“I think it means ‘all aboard.’”

“Aboard? How are we supposed to fit aboard THAT?”

The train horn sounded.

“TUTTI A BORDO!”

So we elbowed our way onto the train car, past Italian passengers who were not thrilled to make room for us, and showed it. I sustained a blow to the upper lip from a little old woman carrying an umbrella. An elderly man in a beanie delivered a power shot to my kidneys.

We were jellybeans in a jar when the train doors shut. Standing shoulder to pelvis.

In a few hours we were in Pompeii. The world’s largest archeological site.

For those who failed fifth-grade history class (present!), Pompeii is an ancient city dating back to 8th century BC, shortly after the birth of Cher. The town is 150 acres wide, sitting

at the base of Mount Vesuvius, a large double-volcano.

When Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, Pompeii was blanketed in 20 feet of volcanic ash, frozen in time forever, transforming the city into what archeologists refer to as, “a tourist trap.”

There are hundreds of simultaneous tours happening at any given hour in Pompeii. The tour packages are tailored to suit different cultures. You can close your eyes at any point and hear guides speaking Hindi, Korean, Portuguese, Japanese, Swahili, and whatever else.

We were with the American tour group, which means we were the only ones, in all of Pompeii, who were complaining.

Throughout our tour, I heard things like:

“Isn’t there anything to eat in this freaking place?” “Why are we moving so fast?” “My feet hurt.” “Why are there so many hills?” “It’s too hot out here.” “I can’t understand her accent.”…

Sunrise in Sorrento was nice. Although I never saw it because I was busy sleeping 14 hours to recover from jet lag.

I awake around midmorning. The inn staff snickers when I come downstairs for my complimentary coffee.

“Perhaps you are looking for a comb for your hair, signore?” says a young female staff person.

I glance in a nearby mirror. I looked like Elsa Lanchester as the bride of Frankenstein.

Big dumb American, sloppy and unkempt.

So I take a shower. There is an open porthole in my shower stall, facing the street. It’s literally a hole in the wall so I can see what’s going on below me.

I overhear children and merchants shouting and laughing down below as I scrub my armpits. People are speaking Italian loudly. It is a singsong language. The inflections of the sentences have a definite meter and melody.

When I wash my hair, I notice something is wrong with the complimentary shampoo. It smells funky. I inspect the bottle and find that it is

labeled “intimate cleanser.”

Big dumb American. Washing his hair with private-parts soap.

Soon, my wife and I are wandering the City of Gardens. The sun is painting the sides of the old stone walls, some of which date back to ancient Greek times. The stucco villas are adorned with open shutters and iron balconies. The windows are open, with people leaning outside, hanging wash. I hear an old man singing.

Meantime, tourists are meandering the narrow streets in throngs, like the Children of Israel, shoulder to shoulder.

Ever since the pandemic, Sorrento has seen an uptick in visitors. Some estimate as much as a 65 percent rise in tourism. They’ve always been a tourism mecca, with about 90 percent of the local population working in the tourism sector. The other 10 percent are in cemeteries.

This is why on the streets of Sorrento you can hear every language…

“Bienvenuto in Italia,” said the airline greeter.

Then she air-kissed both my cheeks.

We deboarded our plane in the Fiumicino Airport at 1 a.m., US Eastern Standard Time. Although it was mid-morning in Rome, so my internal clock was all screwed up. I couldn't have been more disoriented if I’d awoken with my face sewed to the carpet.

Almost everyone we met spoke English. So we were in business, language-wise. We had no problem getting around.

We traversed the massive airport, searching for anything to eat because we were starving; all we had been served on the flight were four strands of gnocchi pasta, and one unidentified brown vegetable that looked, more or less, like it had fallen out of a diaper.

We found a restaurant in the food court. And I was noticing the Fiumicino airport doesn’t feel all that different from an airport in, say, Milwaukee. All the signage was in English. All the people spoke English, most a Midwestern American dialect. Everyone was wearing Packers T-shirts and calling their spouses Harold.

“Where

are all the Europeans?” I asked the server in our authentic Italian airport restaurant.

“Beats me,” he answered. “Thank you for choosing McDonald’s, may I take your order?”

Soon, we were out of the airport, looking for the train station. And this is where True Europe began.

The adjoining airport train station is a genuinely multinational experience, about as organized as an Afghanistani war zone. There are, literally, tens of thousands of frantic people with roller suitcases circulating throughout the station, who are all—hard as this is to imagine—not American.

You hear every language. You see all kinds. Likewise, you can easily spot the random American tourist couples because these are the only couples nervously clutching phone GPSs, having elaborate arguments with each other about “DANGIT! Don’t tell me how to read a map, Ethel!”

Also, I located the bathrooms and discovered that Italian toilets…