Poor trip planning (Part 2)

We arrived in Italy in the middle of the day, and parked at a rest-stop for a late lunch. Waiting in line for my Panini, my stomach started to turn. I knew absolutely no Italian whatsoever, besides a basic bonjourno, prego and gratzi (and don’t judge me for my spelling here - this post is about not knowing Italian). I couldn’t even count to ten. And here I was, Italian phrases unfurling around me at every direction. We didn’t even have a hotel reservation for that night.

Perhaps I’m getting used to Flanders, where everyone and their mother speaks a bit of English, or perhaps it was just that we felt like we would pass through Italy so fleetingly that it really wouldn’t matter, but it had never occurred to me to be nervous about not speaking Italian.

We got to Livorno, the port town where we would take the ferry the next day, and literally just drove around until we saw a couple of hotel signs. We stood in the dimly lit little entryway of an old-fashioned pensione, a plump woman asking us questions that we couldn’t answer. We held up our fingers. One night. One. The t.v. was blaring in the other room, and a little dog barked a couple of times. We surrendered our id’s much too readily, and let her copy the details down by hand in an old ledger before she handed us a key with a giant chain.

The room was somehow incredibly romantic – large and sparsely furnished with a cold tile floor and a high ceiling. There was a picture of the Virgin Mary above the bed, and a Catholic cross right outside our door. We had a sink in the room, and the water was refreshingly cold.

That night, we went out on the street, narrowed in on a couple that looked like they knew where they were going, and slipped into their restaurant behind them. We were embarrassed when the wait staff tried their best to give us details in English, only to go search out the one kid on staff who had apparently passed his English exams in school, or had bragged a bit sometime that his English wasn’t shabby. He was kind to us and served us a good, Italian meal accompanied by good, Italian wine, and he asked us questions eagerly about our travels. At the end of the night, we left a sizeable tip, even though it’s not the custom. Something for the care they took with a couple of unprepared tourists. It was a really lovely time, I suppose, partly because of the language barriers. Somehow, it was more romantic that way. But I must admit, once we made it to Corsica and were back on French-speaking soil, I felt a swell of relief.