Brushes with the law

Editor’s Note: Because I was in Florence for a month (with several side trips taken during that time), it’s going to take me a few blog posts to tell the whole story. This first blog post tackles my first 24 hours in Florence, which was…eventful.

Scheduled for the end of my time in Italy, my month in Florence served as a culmination of the journey. A grand, epic way to finish the tour. And because Florence was the first time I got to stay in a single city for an extended time, it was also where I was most directly confronted with the reality of Italy (and honestly, travel in general): it’s complicated.

I’ll explain.

I arrived in Florence, still a bit unsteady after being so sick in Sicily. But the minute I got off the train, I could sense that Florence moved at a different pace than the other big cities I’d visited thus far. I took a taxi over to my Airbnb, which was a tiny little apartment perched over Piazza Santa Croce (which is named after—and anchored by—the stunning Santa Croce church). The piazza was huge and with little adornment, which allowed ample space for people to do their thing. Sitting near my tiny windows overlooking the piazza, I watched people stroll with gelato, play impromptu games of soccer, sip Aperol spritzes from cafes lining the square, and shop from little kiosks selling everything from beautiful paintings to aprons printed with David’s chiseled frontside.

The Gelateria Scam

On my first night in Florence, I went to get some gelato at a gelateria around the corner from my apartment. After I paid, I stuffed the receipt they handed me into my pocket and opened the door to leave. (I know, I know…so much detail, right? Bear with me…I’m trying to set up a story here!)

As I left the gelato shop, the first thing I noticed was a super handsome guy standing on the sidewalk in front of the shop looking directly at me. Like, intense eye contact. I returned his gaze for a moment, smiled, and then turned to walk up the street towards my apartment. He immediately started walking after me and said, “Wait!” So I stopped and turned around, looked into his dreamy eyes and said, “Yes?” He paused, smiled sweetly, and said: “Can I see your receipt?” At the same time he pulled out his wallet to show me a police badge and then said, “I’m a police officer.” This surprised me because the guy was wearing normal clothes. Like, really nice, well-fitting clothes. (Are you all getting the picture here? Am I being explicit enough? The guy was smoking hot. Distractingly hot.) Now, I had been traveling for most of the day and this was my first night in town, so I was feeling pretty discombobulated. Also, I had no idea what an Italian police badge looks like, much less how to tell a fake one apart from a real one. And in that moment, it dawned on me, ‘Oh, this is a scam.’ So I furrowed my brow and with no small amount of disgust in my voice said, “No!” and whipped around to leave, walking away at top speed.

To my surprise, he literally ran after me. When he caught up to me, he was chuckling and said, “No really, I’m a police officer. I need to see your receipt. We’re checking to make sure they charged you tax.” I stopped and looked at him while I tried to figure out what was going on. I quickly thought back to all of the scams Rick Steves warned me about, but I couldn’t remember him telling me about the ‘Can I see your gelato receipt’ scam. So I started to think through how this scam might work….Was my credit card number printed on the receipt? No. Was my signature on it? No.

As I was running through the potential scenarios in my head, he pulled out his phone and showed me that he had pictures of dozens of other people’s receipts. And then, another police officer walked up to us. Also hot. Also wearing plain clothes. But much less kindly. He pulled out his badge and said, “Is there a problem here?” Unable to figure out what the scam could be and now a bit uncomfortable by the growing number of perhaps-real, perhaps-fake super-hot policemen surrounding me, I reluctantly handed over my receipt. (Side note: I wound up dropping the receipt while handing it to the first police officer, meaning that he had to kind of scramble to pick it up, which honestly just added to the absurdity of the whole situation.)

So then he took a photo of my receipt and very kindly said, “Thank you very much sir. You were right to be cautious. But I am a police officer.” And then they both walked back towards the gelateria to continue enforcing the law. Or to continue scamming people. I really have no idea which.  

The Pizzeria Theft

The next day, I was feeling well enough to go for my first run in a while, so I decided to make my way to the Arno River. I ran through arcades of arched columns and past stores displaying tiny miniature libraries, until I came upon Florence’s iconic bridge: the Ponte Vecchio. From the bridge, lined with quaint, albeit wildly expensive jewelry shops, I paused to look out over the river. Its glassy surface was interrupted only by four narrow crew boats, slicing their way upriver. Further downriver, the water flowed over a series of ledges, which created cascading, mid-river waterfalls. It was really spectacular.

I spent most of the rest of the day adjusting to Florence. I did laundry. Went grocery shopping. And tried to get my bearings before my cooking course was to begin the following day. By that evening, I was exhausted and decided to grab a pizza to bring home with me for dinner. When I walked in to a little pizzeria around the corner from my apartment, I was immediately confused by the layout. There were two different random desks, situated in weird places and at odd angles. No host stand. And by standing near the door through which I walked in, I found myself uncomfortably close to where the servers picked up the pizzas from the kitchen. Basically, it was very unclear where I were supposed to stand while I was waiting, so I just stood near one of the desks awkwardly until someone came to help me. Then I ordered my pizza, paid for it, and they told me to come back in twenty minutes.

While I was waiting, I went for a lovely walk through the neighborhood. When I returned to pick up my pizza, the awkward entry space was now packed with people. As I waited to ask someone if my pizza was ready, I noticed a pizza sitting on one of the desks close to the door. I saw that it had my name on it, so I picked it up. As I turned around to ask someone if I could take the pizza, a woman from across the restaurant bellowed, “Excuse me, sir! You cannot just TAKE a pizza!” Mortified, I said, “I’m so sorry. I think it’s my pizza though?” And she said, “Yes, but it’s not self-service!” So I set the pizza back down on the desk. And then, after all that, she says, “Take it!” So I picked up the pizza again and left…really, really upset.

Here’s the thing about me: I’m a rules follower. What’s more: I hate accidentally messing up, especially when it comes to rules. It’s something imbedded deep within me and honestly kind of an annoying trait of mine, because it winds up generating a lot of uncecessary stress internally. And this situation was no exception. I walked home from the pizzeria anguished. It was a beautiful night in Florence. I had had a wonderful day. I was walking home to a lovely apartment with a delicious pizza in hand and I was in complete turmoil. And I know this isn’t a fun story to read about. Even now, after I’ve had time to process the experience, I can’t come up with a funny spin to it. It sucked. But I did gain something from the experience. That night, amidst some really bad dreams, I had some sort of dream-induced epiphany. Here’s what I wrote about it in my notes from the next morning: “I could die today. Or maybe fifty years from now. But I should live this day knowing that it could be my last. Be brave. And be kind to people. But don’t let them bring you down.”

Which brings me back to my original point at the beginning of this post: Italy is complicated. Travel is complicated. And that’s a feature, not a bug. If that experience had not happened to me at the pizzeria that night, I would have enjoyed the walk home a lot more than I actually did. I probably would have savored the warm air and enjoyed seeing people laughing at small tables along the sidewalk. (This is also the type of scenario you would see posted on Instagram.) However, I wouldn’t have come away from that night with a lesson either, one that would last much longer than the simple memory of a beautiful evening. My lesson was this: there will always be cranky pizza ladies complicating beautiful Florentine evenings. And because of this, I must actively choose to let go of those frustrating experiences as quickly as possible. Otherwise, I risk being unable to fully appreciate what’s in front of me—like a golden evening in Florence.  

And to me, these complicated lessons are one of the greatest gifts of travel—lessons that teach us how to deal with the proverbial fly in the glass of pinot grigio. You can pout and leave the fly in the glass and refuse to drink it. Or you can laugh, scoop it out quickly, and not let it ruin an otherwise lovely glass of wine.

Cheers.