The Parasites of European Tourism: Awful Restaurants in Top Spots

Image via Samuli Lintula, Wikipedia

For any of the cafés at the Piazza della Signoria, Florence,
expect to pay exorbitant prices.

The greatest problem with going on a tour of the main sites of a new and foreign city is lunch. Where do you go, when you’re hungry from exploring a city that you don’t know very well, you’re miles away from your hotel and you haven’t packed anything to take with you? Occasionally, you find yourself going to familiar fast-food chains just because you’ll know what to expect. But when in Paris, or Florence, or somewhere with a good reputation for food, do you really want to be eating at McDonalds? So you try having a look for a nice restaurant, or café to eat and here comes the real problem: those parasitic restaurateurs that live off of the good culinary reputation of a particular country or city or region to serve you rubbish on a plate and charge the world for it.

Such restaurants and cafés are always to be found in tourist hubs, a pub in Covent Garden, the bistro across from Notre Dame, or the Al Fresco café in Florence’s Piazza della Signoria. They survive because they get their traffic not from their own good reputation, but from the reputation of whatever tourist attraction that they are close to. As David Whitley of Grumpy Traveller has commented:

“They know they won’t get repeat trade, they know people on holiday fritter away money at a rate they’d not dream of at home, and they know that the odd upset customer is worth the gain.


“And they’re always the places where service is worst.”

But the corollary that no-one seems to notice about this parasitic practice is that the loser in the end (apart from the unhappy customer) is the reputation of the country or the place that is being so parasitically exploited in this way. So much so that, having visited Tuscany I can honestly tell you that although Florence is such a significant city in European history and although it has such great architecture and the Uffizi and Accademia are unmissable, the entire city is a giant tourist trap, and for the real Tuscan experience I would recommend nearby Lucca, which has its own splendid Piazzas, cathedrals and fountains and a significant and interesting history of its own.

And the real big-time loser in this parasitic practice is France. To the extent that you might find a columnist in Britain’s “The Independent” fatuously claim that British food is better than French. For an Australian who’d never been Paris, such a claim would be dismissed as ridiculous, just on reputation alone, even more so for an Australian whose experience of British cuisine was the pub-grub of north Hertfordshire. But for my part, as I had been to Paris, I could see that there was some credibility in the columnist’s claim. Unfortunately, France which, since at least the 50s has enjoyed a pre-eminent position in the culinary world, nowadays suffers from such a rash of mediocre restaurants that I can well imagine that around the world, everyday there are hordes of holidaymakers returning from France with a massive sense of disappointment at the much-vaunted “French cuisine” that they’d heard so much about.

Image via Wikipedia

A beautiful view from atop the Cathédrale Notre-Dame 
de Paris, but I'm sure that there aren't any great
restaurants to be seen! Tourist hubs like the Île de la
Cité are no-go zones for good food and good service.

For Paris in particular, the world’s most visited city, with 45 million tourists a year, it is a particular problem, and having visited the city four times, I still can’t recommend a restaurant for my readers for a mind-blowing French-food experience. For that, I would urge readers to visit l’Alchemiste in Saumur in the Loire Valley, a place I never would have found were it not for the recommendation of my hosts when staying at Château de Verrières.

The Perfect Tuscany Escape

Image via Tom Häkkinen
One of Florence's innumerable beautiful streets

or
How we nailed Tuscany!

I am immensely pleased with our recent trip to Italy. Every moment was gold and we left with no regrets except perhaps how much we spent. Maybe, this is just Tuscany, and everyone feels like this after going there, but having had difficulties with trips to similarly “romantic” destinations, I would like to think that good planning and maybe a little luck also played a part and that is what this blog is going to be about.

My initial conclusion after the trip was that the little Tuscan town of Lucca would be the greatest place in the universe if only the Lucchese spoke French and not Italian. I’m not sure now – as beautiful as French is, you can’t have the whole world speaking French – but nevertheless I’m not ready to say that Lucca beats Avignon in Provençe. In either case, it’s a close call and Lucca is a big part of why our trip to Tuscany worked so well.

But first: some background

Image via Tom Häkkinen
A street in Pisa

Italy is the home of the Romans and like most westerners who know some history I have a passion for that unassuming republic which became an Empire. Furthermore, when the Roman Empire collapsed and Europe fell into the dark ages, it was also small Italian city-states that gave birth to the flourishing of Arts and Sciences, inspired by Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece, known as the Renaissance. So I find it bizarre that when Italians have such a rich cultural background, particularly in what is considered “high culture”, that you’ll find t-shirts with “Il Padrino” and a tommy-gun wielding Marlon Brandow on them in tourist shops in Italy. And likewise Italian cab-drivers in England and overseas will have the theme-song from the Godfather tinnily ringing out as their mobile phone ringtone. Italians seem to have no idea how blessed they are with such a rich cultural history and yet for some unfathomable they identify mostly with an American gangster.



Image via Tom Häkkinen
A famous Florentine

Perhaps for this reason I never had a great interest in travelling to Italy until I began studying French – that is, until the infectious enthusiasm of Stendhal and Dumas won me over to the land of the Ghibelline and Guelph, of condottieri and cardinals. And so, I became fascinated with the birthplace of the renaissance – Florence.

In travelling to Italy this world of renaissance splendour was the image of Italy that I had in the back of my head. And this passion for the Florentine Renaissance conditioned my expectations of Italy – travelling with my partner I wanted to arrive mysteriously like Edmond Dantès and to live like an aristocratic Italian count and countess and pretend to be liberal patrons of the arts and sciences.
To this end, art galleries and museums were in – but not too many! Nightlife was in – but not the cheap backpacker scene! Everything was to be sedate and relaxed and we were in search of “la dolce vita” and we wanted to discover “joie de vivre.”

So the Trip:

Image via Tom Häkkinen
The "Palazzo Tucci" in Lucca

First after a close reading of my Rough Guides Italy and a careful study of some maps and the Trenitalia website I decided to take a punt on staying at the “Palazzo Tucci” in Lucca rather than Florence. It turned out this was an inspired decision.

Whilst there are many hotels in Lucca, the “Palazzo Tucci” a “Residenza d’Epoca” or historic residence suited our aims perfectly. Its name is in no-way misleading, it essentially is a restored palace, presumably that of a noble Lucchese family. And although, it was more of a bed and breakfast than a four-star hotel – it was a bed and breakfast in a palace! The enormous ceilings with painted frescoes and massive “Juliet” balcony out the front really did make you feel like a Renaissance aristocrat.

Lucca is not far, only half an hour on the train, from Pisa and Pisa International Airport (Pisa Galileo Galilei). Regardless of whether you fly easyJet or British Airways, Pisa is a significantly cheaper route into Tuscany than Florence. And whilst you’re in Pisa you may as well take the opportunity to get some shots of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, although I have to admit that I don’t really like the building (it leans!).

Image via Tom Häkkinen
Michelangelo's "David" in the Accademia di Belle Arti Firenze

Likewise, Lucca is not too far from Florence for you to be able to visit an art gallery or two on a day-trip. Someone out there has probably choked on a pretzel and is in desperate need of the Heimlich manoeuvre having just read “Florence” and “on a day trip” in the same sentence but I’ll give my reasons. Whilst Florence is so overwhelmingly beautiful that at times it feels like it is more packed with beautiful buildings and monuments than the entirety of a New World country like Australia put together – it can sometimes feel like it’s likewise packed with Australia’s national quota of tourists as well. You have to book admission into famous galleries like the Uffizi and Accademia days in advance. Every street corner seems to have a beautiful statue or fountain and every street is lined with beautiful Italian buildings – but likewise each street corner is crowded with tourists taking shots and buying Gelatti as well. So for this reason I’m not sure if it’s possible to be able to visit the same Florence that Stendhal fell in love with. You can’t actually lose yourself in the magic and glamour of the city. It’s like an action film filled with glaring physically-impossible stunts – the “suspension of disbelief” keeps being broken by the inconsistent physical properties of a super-hero’s weapon or in the case of Florence by a mass of tourists cackling loudly with that raucous Miss-Magpie-laughter so peculiar to the English language.

Image via Tom Häkkinen
Lucca from atop the Torre Delle ore

This is why Lucca is such a perfect alternative. Lucca is a compact, walled, Tuscan town. From the top of the Torre Delle ore the town looks like it has just stepped-out of a San Remo pasta ad. The city also seems quite well-heeled and it doesn’t have any of the rundown look that affects parts of Pisa. But most important of all – it has nothing of the feel of a “tourist destination”, there’s no McDonalds anywhere, no tacky tourists shops selling bottles of olive oil shaped like the tower of Pisa. You don’t have to worry about breaking the suspension of disbelief because there is no suspension of disbelief – you’re in it and it is authentic!