Hi Chloe!

 

Hi Ashley.

 

Welcome to Not Your Mom’s Travel Guide, a podcast exploring traveler’s guilt. Chloe is a current senior at the University of Michigan majoring in political science and minoring in writing. Next year Chloe is actually off to law school, so congrats on that, Chlo. 

 

Thank you!

 

During her junior year of undergrad, Chloe studied abroad in Florence at Lorenzo de’ Medici. Chloe, can you just tell us a little bit about your experience living and studying abroad? 

 

Yeah. So I had the most amazing four months ever. I lived in an apartment with two other girls on a very busy street. 

 

Other study abroad students?

 

Other study abroad students from different schools. I ate a lot.

 

Traveled a lot.

 

Traveled a lot on the weekends. Great experience. I love Florence with all my heart.

 

That sounds absolutely amazing, but I know a big concern about traveling as a study abroad student is not getting the real, the cultural experience that we look for and that we think we’re getting when we’re spending four months living in a new country. We often fall victim to tourist traps, though. Did you experience this at all while living in Florence?

 

Yeah, so as great as Florence is, it is insanely in a way fake for tourists. Every day we’d hear the same band play the same American song. It just felt like we were on a loop every day. 

 

That’s so funny, like Groundhog Day, the movie. 

 

Yes! Because it’s always a show. And, so going off of that, a lot of things weren’t as authentic as you’d think they’d be. The leather market, for instance…

 

Gotcha. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

 

Yeah, so the leather market is an outdoor market and it’s basically just a bunch of stands with purses and belts. 

 

Yeah, vendors selling them.

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Yeah, vendors. And it’s called the leather market and you’re supposed to go and get a real leather item for a bargain price. Turns out-- nothing close to real leather. 

 

No way.

 

Not even a bargain because--

 

Because it's fake!

 

It’s fake and then you go over to the next vendor and if you bargain with him more you’d get cheaper than you bargained with the other one. 

 

So they’re totally up marking it. 

 

Totally up marking it. You’re not getting anything authentic. You will never see a local step foot there because it’s all fake. 

 

Exactly, they know. They know what we don’t.

 

They know. They know. That is definitely a big tourist trap that we all fell for. 

 

Multiple times.

Because I have a bunch of purses from there that I know are fake and I paid overpriced for! Even the Gucci Garden. In the middle of the city, there is just this beautiful, beautiful Gucci store. 

 

Like literally city center?

 

Yes and Florence does have beautiful, expensive shopping. But this Gucci Garden store is just for the tourists. You will not find a local Italian walk into this store and buy a Gucci bag. And the whole store is--

 

Even if they're looking to purchase?

 

Even if they’re looking they would never go because the store itself is a tourist attraction. You don’t just go there to buy things, like my friends and I went and we weren’t buying things but there’s pretty artwork and places to take pictures. So they kind of reel you in this way. I did have a friend who was reeled in like that and then ended up buying something! So, they get you and when you’re there you just don’t feel like you’re in Florence. You’re walking right from the city center; there’s a big statue of a man and you just walk into the Gucci Garden.

 

And you feel like you’re almost transported back to westernized America in a mall.

 

I feel like I’m back-- I’m from New York and there’s Manhasset something called the Americana Miracle Mile and I feel like I’m back there.

 

Yes. I totally get that. I totally get that. And these experiences aren’t necessarily culturally significant, but they tend to be popular amongst tourists. Locals, like you said, probably wouldn’t dare step near these unless they’re directly profiting from it. They’re the vendors, you know? But did you experience this at any other place, like restaurants? Or was it just those two?

 

Restaurants is a big part of that. 

 

Because when you go to Florence, you’re like, I’m getting Italian food! 

Yeah, you go for the food. So, in the beginning, we would go to a lot of places that we heard from other study abroad kids that they really liked and--

 

All the recommendations. 

 

As great as they were, these are the tourist places. Zaza? Menu is in English. It started to ring a red flag. 

 

Clicked!

 

This isn’t authentic. This isn’t what we’re here for. And so as time went on, we would search around the city and we found real authentic places. Can’t have any English. There were signs the deeper you go in. And then even near the really big sites in Florence, like the Duomo, for instance, there’s a lot of little restaurants surrounding it. They look like cute, nice Italian places. You go, they’re three times the price of a local place you’d find inside of the city.

 

Because they can.

 

Because they can. Not as good. It’s just funny because my professors, a lot of them lived in Florence, but deep in Florence. 

 

Nowhere near where you guys lived. 

Nowhere near the main area where the tourist attractions are and they just live such a different lifestyle. Even when I’ve walked back there, it’s quiet and authentic and it’s a totally different vibe than the tourist area that study abroad students are in. 

 

And do you feel guilty at all for succumbing to these tourist traps? Do you feel like your outlook maybe changed on some of those places over the time you spent living in Italy?

 

As a New Yorker, I am aware of what tourism can do. It’s not like it negatively affected me in Florence. We still had a great time and enjoyed what we did, but as time went on we would think of ourselves as locals even though we weren’t. You know, it bothered me that these people were coming--

 

They get sucked into these places and they’ll never actually know true Florence.

Exactly. There’s so much to Florence that the tourism industry tries to hide and it’s sad because as great as Florence is and as great as the tourists think it is, there’s just so much more that it offers that tourists will just never be aware of if they weren’t living there like I was. 

 

Yeah. And shifting the conversation a little here but I can’t not mention Italy in relation to COVID-19 and this time of global pandemic especially today, March 19th, Italy surpassing China’s death toll. Italy as a whole is obviously very dependent on tourism and this pandemic will impact a ton. This year alone Italy is supposed to lose 4.7 million tourists and Tuscany, the region that Florence is in where you lived for four months expects a decrease in 695,000. And tourists have the ability and the privilege to avoid countries that are hit hard by the pandemic but locals can’t. How do you feel about the condition that the country you lived in for four months is currently in?

 

It’s heartbreaking that a country so vibrant and with so much to offer is in this situation and having a personal connection, it makes me think of my program director, my professors, my favorite waiter at one of my favorite restaurants. Knowing these people makes it even more emotional because you know...

 

You don’t know if they’re okay.

 

I won’t know if they’re okay.

 

If they’re healthy and happy.

 

If they’re healthy and happy, yeah. If their families are okay. When you know people…

 

It totally makes it harder, yeah. I get that. And we talked a lot about everything from tourism traps to dependence on the tourism industry to the impact of COVID-19. So thank you so much, Chloe, for giving us some amazing insight on your experiences studying and living in Italy!

 

Thank you for having me!