The Americans are Coming!

 In 1775 Paul Revere's ride to warn the cities of Concord and Lexington about the British troops arrival made famous the quote "The British are coming! The British are coming!" more than 340 years later, MJ and I heard the phrase "The Americans are coming!" in the reverse context: The concierge at teh Firenze No. 9 hotel in Florence, Italy explained to us that the end of May is typically high tide for visitors coming to Florence and Italy in general, and that more than any other country, it was the Americans that showed up the most starting around this time through the summer. Instead of invading Redcoats intent on waging war however, the Americans that are coming are tourists with American dollars and oversized budgets who are willing to dish out some of those beaucoup bucks on the local economy. 

More than any other time on an international trip, I felt like an American tourist on our vacation to Italy, perhaps simply because there were so many of us that we overwhelmed the locals (in fact, this is an increasing problem in places like Venice, where there aren't enough people to work the stores and businesses to meet the demand from floods of tourists). MJ and I bought the Rick Steves Italy guide before our trip, and on several occasions I saw other tourists holding it out or thumbing through it looking for the next place to go. At breakfast at the hotel, a couple who ordered the breakfast package with bacon simply introduced themselves as being from "Texas." Instead of hearing the native language of the country all around us, on the train or at local attractions we often heard the undeniable sound of American-accented English, as if we were on an Amtrak in New York or baseball game in Ohio. (Not that we didn't hear native Italian speakers.....they made themselves felt by being particularly loud and animated in speaking, which I appreciate as a naturally loud speaker myself but also the emotion and emphasis conveyed in their conversations). It also hammered home the idea of a "tourist trap," where local vendors would try to sell things geared specifically towards the idea that Americans had money and would buy almost anything and with little discretion. Different restaurants in cities specifically catered towards specific audiences and were identified as "this is where Americans eat in Italy" or "this is where local Italians eat....." which usually came after typical meal times, after working their shifts serving Americans, they finally got time to eat at places that weren't tourist traps. 

My family never went on international trips (unless you consider road trip excursions to Canada or family-related flights back to China) so I always thought trips to Europe were more of a once-in-a-lifetime thing, not the yearly migration it seems some Americans have made it. College seemed like prime time for many students to "study abroad" (aka spend several months in a different country attending classes but also living it up) which I missed out on both in undergrad and law school, which looking back was definitely a lost opportunity. 

In other news, the Spelling Bee ended in historic fashion last night: a speed round! I never knew words could be spelled that fast before. Part of the "traditionalist" spelling bee fan in me doesn't like the added component of speed, where not only are kids competing on knowledge of words, but now on how fast they can articulate letters out of their mouths, but the alternative could be having an eight-way tie again last a few years ago......less than ideal. There's also the "entertainment factor" of keeping audiences interested and having an exciting finish at the end, like sudden-death in overtime; it's a necessary evil to keep the National Spelling Bee in modern times where the average viewer has a 15-second attention span. As one Japanese politican put it, "you gotta be sexy, you gotta be cool."