Feast, my Darlings

Are Italians really as Italian as people think they are?

My wife and I went to Mexico, a place known for emotionalism, tardiness, poverty, dishonesty, and laziness. Our hotel was not perfect, but it was pretty clean, the staff was helpful and efficient, and the security was good. Now we are looking at Florence and Rome. I wasn’t able to find a single hotel that didn’t have scary reviews, so we are shooting for Airbnb instead.

Italians suffer from the same basic stereotypes as Mexicans, except that you are less likely to be kidnapped by the police in Italy. Are the stereotypes justified?

I have traveled a lot over the last three years, and I rely on reviews, for whatever they’re worth. One thing I know is this: if a business has 3,000 reviews and a near-perfect rating, you ignore the good reviews and read the bad ones. Read the ones that start with phrases like, “I can’t understand all the good reviews.” This is what I did while looking for Italian hotels.

I looked at hotels under a certain price. Repeatedly, I saw complaints about bad smells, nonfunctional air conditioning, noise, rude staff, violent staff, dirty rooms, bedbugs, bait and switch games, and elevators that didn’t exist or only went part of the way to rooms. I figured I was being too cheap. I looked for rooms that cost more. Same hotels with the same reviews. I could not find anything that looked acceptable, and I was willing to pay $400 per night.

Here’s the worst thing I saw: hotel proprietors routinely insulted and argued with guests who left bad reviews. Some apologized and said they would try to do better, but many, many reacted like, well, like Italians.

If you’re going to insult and belittle your customers and accuse them of lying on the Internet, where the world can see it, what will you do in private when new guests arrive?

When you look at bad reviews for Swiss hotels, you see a different picture. The clerk didn’t want to provide extra towels. The room was small. The hotel was too far from the train station. No one complains about stained sheets, reservations canceled without notice, or sewage smells.

We went to Egypt and picked a hotel and a cruise ship off the web. The hotel was clean and spacious. The bathrooms were fantastic. They had bidets. The food was pretty good. The staff was nice. There was no noise. The ship was clean. The staff was wonderful. The food was better than the hotel food.

We went to Turkey. The hotel could not have been much better. Everything was spotless. The beds were huge and comfortable. The bathrooms were worthy of the nation that invented the Turkish bath.

Egypt and Turkey. These are not blue ribbon destinations. Egypt is a second world country, and if Turkey is first world, it’s not high on the list. Italy is held out to be a real country, like Germany. How come they can’t run decent hotels?

I considered giving up on Italy, but…it’s Italy. You can’t take the Ponte Vecchio and the Coliseum and move them to a nation where the hotels are clean. Italy was the hub of Renaissance art. The art is still there. If you want to see it, you have to risk sleeping with the bedbugs.

If we go, we will use Airbnb. We’ve had good experiences with apartments in the past. You get to sit at a dinner table. You get to do laundry. You get a real refrigerator. You don’t get drunks screaming right outside your door all night or banging on it by mistake, trying to get inside for sex.

The general, but not ironclad, rule about stereotypes is that they don’t develop in a vacuum. No one complains about the Japanese being overemotional or dishonest. No one crosses the street upon seeing a big male Norwegian approach. The people complaining about Italian hotels surely have good reason for their critiques. Italians are fun people, and they live in a fun country, but if Egypt and Mexico are beating them, they need to shape up.

I did some research and learned that Rome has some excellent pizza shops, so I hope to hit at least one of them if we go.

In a few weeks, we will know if we have a visa.