The irony is that I now understand the ‘overtourism’ complaints

Due to priority going to a holiday consisting of a spot of puma trekking in Chile and some other fun in Argentina, it’s been a while since I last checked in on our European trip in September. We started out walking the streets and sailing down the Seine in Paris during Anna’s annual Euretina Congress. Now we were in Italy, first for a low vision conference in Florence and then a couple of days in Venice so she could take a bit of a break. Here’s how the Italian leg went down, almost all of it from my shocking memory jogged slightly by looking at photos several months afterwards, plus a little input from the woman herself.

Sunday, September 7, 2025
We arrived in Florence and checked into the gorgeous Hotel Cerratani, located right next to a weed store, just after 6:00pm. This wasn’t our first time in Florence, but our time spent here back in 2012 doesn’t even register in my mind. Anna loves Italian food so she just wanted to get out the door and start eating, instinctively turning left and we were off, winding our way through what we would later discover weren’t too crowded streets. The first place we discovered was the 25Hours Hotel and this place was cool with its bar, cinema, supermarket, and sausage plush toys forming chandeliers from the ceiling. Unfortunately the restaurant was booked out that night, however, we could still get some snacks and a drink outside while we looked up other places to eat, but we’d definitely be trying again. In no time at all Anna had decided where we were going that night, Enoteca Vigna Nuova. We could’ve opted for a giant Florentine steak, but that would have to wait for another night, she was after real Italian food, on this occasion truffle gnocchi for her and a pasta for me.
Our dinner ended up finishing quite late and I had discovered where we would be going next so we strolled around some of the streets and squares on the way, trying to take in the sites while making an effort to avoid the throngs of people, but it turned out that these were just a fraction of the crowds we’d encounter over the coming days. We eventually arrived at our destination, Alibi Bar, where Anna couldn’t resist getting a photo of me with a painting of a giraffe drinking a beer.
Our hotel and our first evening in Florence:

Monday, September 8, 2025
I get the irony of writing this as a tourist, but today when we left the hotel it became abundantly clear why many European cities, including Florence, are complaining about over-tourism. It’s not so much the ones who just go about their thing, it’s the countless massive tour groups of at least 20+ people clogging up the narrow streets while the guide talks over a megaphone, the separate groups themselves struggling to get around each other, and taking up every single seat in a restaurant when they stop for lunch. Maybe they were just louder (or perhaps we could tell because they went to Starbucks for their coffee in Italy!), but it seemed like more than half of them were from the US and these groups of people in their 50s and 60s just had no awareness of space or technology, not caring if they were in the way with their enormous foldout maps, trying to figure out where they were. It wasn’t only frustrating trying to get through streets jammed with these groups, but then when you get to any beautiful site or landmark, all of the younger members of the groups take turns trying time and time again to get the perfect selfie, checking it and trying once more for a better one while some of us just want one unobstructed photo.

Our first stop of the day after coffee was for food and Anna once more had that sorted, we’d be eating at Mercato di Sant’Ambrogio, the oldest market in Florence and I think a place where we had eaten on our previous time in town, Anna reminding me of how much I had loved the tripe stew there. We found a stall that sold it as well as a pasta that appealed to her so we squeezed onto a shared bench at a table, ordered, and it was everything we wanted. We learnt years ago when we were in Rome that it is very easy to pile on weight in Italy so the rest of the day would be trying to walk this off, meaning first avoiding Piazza Santa Croce where many of the groups would be walking.
Lunch and the beginning of our walk:

Another way to escape massive groups is to visit a museum and there are some great ones here so we chose the Museo Nazionale del Bargello:

The Bargello, also known as the Palazzo del Bargello or Palazzo del Popolo (“Palace of the People”), is a former public building and police headquarters, later a prison, in Florence, Italy. Mostly built in the 13th century, since 1865 it has housed the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, a national art museum.

It is the primary national collection for Italian Renaissance sculpture, of which its collection of Florentine works is unequalled, and for the decorative arts of Florence, especially from the Renaissance period. There are also works from earlier and later periods.

The medieval building is relatively well preserved, and includes the Cappella della Maddalena (Magdalen Chapel) with extensive but damaged frescos by Giotto, including a full-length portrait of Dante.

In 2023 it was the 12th most visited museum in Italy, with 610,203 visitors; it generally lacks the long queues to enter the Uffizi.

Now, despite being one of the most visited museums in Italy, it wasn’t crowded and was actually easy to enter and get around inside. We spent about an hour looking around and I took a ton of photos, including a bust that looked remarkably like Johnny Ramone (you’ll know when you see it), but I’ll try to keep these to just the highlights:

We’d still need to make a few more stops if we wanted to wear off lunch and make room for dinner and what better way to drop a few calories than hiking. There were a few options that were in the same general direction as each other so we walked along the Arno river, crossed a bridge to another slightly quieter area of the city and almost an hour later we were in the Oltrano district up at the Piazzale Michelangelo, a square with not only replicas of statues by the man himself including a large, bronze recast of David, but also a perfect panoramic view of Florence. We wandered around the square with the beautiful cityscape in the background, but it was still too early to head back for dinner so instead we forged on up to a church that is over 1,000 years old, the Basilica San Miniato al Monte:

San Miniato al Monte (St. Minias on the Mountain) is a basilica in Florence, central Italy, standing atop one of the highest points in the city. It has been described as one of the finest Romanesque structures in Tuscany and one of the most scenic churches in Italy. There is an adjoining Olivetan monastery, seen to the right of the basilica when ascending the stairs.

Being after 5:00pm on a Monday we knew there was almost no chance of it being open, but that didn’t bother us too much, we figured an adjoining cemetery that old would also be fascinating on its own, plus more great views, the only problem was while meandering through the different areas we got a little lost and thought we might be locked in at one stage, but eventually we found a way to escape the graveyard and made our way back to the city, now hungry once again.
Anna had arranged to have dinner with some people she knew from the Paris conference who just happened to be in Florence as well so when we were back down we found a different area of the city to cut through and join them in a small restaurant, Trattoria da Giorgio, for even more delicious food, followed by what we thought was going to be some relaxing drinks with just the two of us back in a square near our hotel. That all changed, however, when we met a British couple that now live in Florence, Michael and Lucy Packman, the four of us hitting it off immediately, turning into a longer night than expected.
Looking over the city from Piazzale Michelangelo, in the cemetery of San Miniato al Monte, followed by dinner and drinks:

Tuesday, September 9, 2025
We had packed a lot in yesterday so for our final day before moving on to Venice we just took it easy, retracing our steps to pick up some gifts and food, all the while battling the incessant flow of tour groups down every road, but at least they don’t seem to complain as much or suffer from culture shock as badly as young tourists on their own tend to. At one point I heard girl from the US, probably in her 20s, shout, “I’m done with these narrow f_cking sidewalks!”. Well you may find a few inconveniences in a 2,000-year old city built for a small population with narrow streets intended for use by horses, but not developed with the foresight to included modern outdoor seating for cafes and restaurants.

That evening we had some pre-dinner libations in a microbrewery before dinner and we hadn’t had a Florentine steak yet so that seemed like the only option for our final meal and Trattoria Enzo e Piero was the place where we’d be having it. Florence is famous for its enormous t-bone steaks cooked in a traditional way and our 1 kg (2.2 lb) chunk certainly hit the spot. Running on meat-fuel we went out after dinner and as usual our natural charm kicked in and we met some cool people that we would hang out with for the rest of the night.
Just a snippet from dinner and drinks:

Wednesday, September 10, 2025
Now the work was over and it was time to begin the holiday portion of this European getaway by spending a few nights in Venice, not just because I knew it would be beautiful, but also because I didn’t really know what to expect:

Venice is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the region of Veneto. It is built on a group of 118 islands that are separated by expanses of open water and by canals; portions of the city are linked by 438 bridges.

The islands are in the shallow Venetian Lagoon, an enclosed bay lying between the mouths of the Po and the Piave rivers (more exactly between the Brenta and the Sile). As of 2025, the city proper (comune of Venice) has 249,466 inhabitants, nearly 50,000 of whom live in the historical island city of Venice (centro storico), while most of the population resides on the mainland (terraferma), and about 25,000 live on other islands in the lagoon (estuario).

So those bridges over the canals imply that we’d be doing a fair bit of walking and not having to rely solely on gondolas as I first assumed. Another thing that’s interesting is that no surviving historical records exist of the founding and building of Venice, but the generally accepted date is identified as that of the dedication of the first church on March 25, 421 AD. Anyway, enough history, it was raining when we arrived in the city and those bridges turned out to be a little torturous while finding our way to where we would be staying, the Papadopoli Hotel Venezia late in the afternoon, because we had to cross at least four of them, us both carrying one enormous suitcase and another smaller one each up and down the steps every time to the point where we considered getting a water taxi. We were exhausted when we finally arrived so even if it was too wet to leave, we didn’t mind, a rest would be nice and we still had incredible views over the city from the comfort of our room. It also turned out there was a carpark right behind our hotel where our taxi could have dropped us off, saving us the effort, and that is where we insisted to be picked up to go to the airport when our journey was over.
Still, exploring this place is going to be some fun though:

The rain started to dissipate so it was time to check this place out. It’s common knowledge that gondolas are means of getting around Venice, but I thought that was now  mainly  a historical act put on for tourists, however, I guess I was wrong. To be fair we didn’t see that many locals in the gondolas, but one thing we saw even fewer of were cars. In fact, none besides at drop off spots in the outer areas, this is purely a walking city with zero traffic, which sounds perfect to me. The only problem is wandering around the streets and cutting through narrow lanes that lead to a bridge or sometimes a complete dead-end can quickly have you lost, which must be even worse for those who still insist on using foldout paper maps and out of date Lonely Planet guides. The canals, streets, and squares were as beautiful as one could expect, but the best part was that there seemed to be far fewer tour groups, making it just so much easier to enjoy. While strolling around we stumbled upon a few major landmarks, first the ninth-century Chiesa di Santa Maria del Giglio church before moving on and walking down a shopping street and through a huge clocktower to St. Mark’s Square, home of St. Mark’s Basilica, although by this time it was too late to enter so dinner it was. Almost instinctively Anna had done her research while we were stuck in the hotel while waiting for the rain to stop and found a place to eat that evening so we walked over and at first had a little trouble finding it, a tucked away little bar called Osteria al Cicheto for our first traditional Venetian meal and some local wines before going to another bar with craft beers and even more wine for her.
Our first impressions of Venice:

Thursday, September 11, 2025
The bulk of today would be similar to yesterday afternoon, but with two added extras; visiting a gallery and having several more hilarious encounters with American tourists. We had needed a sleep in so it was a little later than usual when we had our coffee and hit the streets, slowly making our way to Gallerie dell’Accademia, home to Leonardo da Vinci’s 1490 drawing Vitruvian Man (it may sound like something you’ve never seen before, but click that link and you’ll almost certainly recognise it), something that would be incredible to see in real life, but unfortunately we wouldn’t be so lucky:

The Vitruvian Man is rarely displayed as extended exposure to light would cause fading; it is kept on the fourth floor of the Gallerie dell’Accademia, in a locked room. In 2019, the Louvre requested to borrow the drawing for their monumental Léonard de Vinciexhibition, which celebrated the 500th anniversary of the artist’s death. They faced substantial resistance from the heritage group Italia Nostra, who contended that the drawing was too fragile to be transported, and filed a lawsuit. At a hearing on 16 October 2019, a judge ruled that the group had not proven their claim, but set a maximum amount of light for the drawing to be exposed to as well as a subsequent rest period to offset its overall exposure to light. The Louvre promised to lend paintings by Raphael to Italy for his own 500th death anniversary; Italy’s Minister for Cultural Affairs Dario Franceschini stated that “Now a great cultural operation can start between Italy and France on the two exhibitions about Leonardo in France and Raphael in Rome.

Even the gallery’s website says that the piece must be conserved in a light- and temperature-controlled environment so the chance of us being there during one of the few minutes it is visible to the public were exceptionally slim, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t get to see any great art, the collection was fantastic, even if it was a little wet getting there:

Once we were done with the gallery we shared a local style pizza and then walked along the canals before pulling up a seat for a couple of mid-afternoon drinks, oblivious to the fact that the rest of the day would consist of us trying not to laugh too hard at multiple ridiculous quotes from loud American tourists. The first few came from a woman sitting behind us who was spouting some pretty ignorant things, but it was when a couple standing nearby got into argument in Italian that she went into overdrive! She walked on over and asked several times what they were fighting about and then even tried to involve herself in the conversation. Eventually her partner asked her to stop and come back, but she just screamed back at him, “I need to know what’s going on!”. Eventually the couple sorted out their beef and left so the American woman decided she wanted to go on a gondola ride and went over to a sign to see what times they departed. Now, over the years of traveling in groups with people from the US by ship or by train where there is an itinerary, we’ve noticed that they tend to find it extremely difficult to convert 24-hour time, or as they call it, “Military Time” to the point that there is even a mobile app to help them do so (above, right). This woman was definitely in that demographic as she shouted back over to her partner, “What’s 17 hundred again?”. It was getting more and more difficult to contain our laughter as she dropped more pearls of wisdom, plus we were quite sweaty from walking around in the sun for a fair portion of the afternoon so we went back to the hotel for a pre-dinner shower.

Naturally Anna had plans on where to eat, Ca’ Leon, another restaurant serving traditional Venetian cuisine, but what appealed to Anna was the handmade pasta. Once seated t didn’t take long for us to select what we were having so as we waited we could hear another loud American family behind us. I don’t know what it is, but their voices just carry, and the mother’s interaction with the waiter was amusing:

Mother – “Can I have that sauce, but with spaghetti?
Waiter – “So you don’t want the handmade pasta?”
Mother – “That’s pasta?!?”

She seemed to be completely perplexed at the fact that not all pasta is long and stringy, but the ones we ordered were and they were delicious!

For our final stop for our penultimate day in Venice we found a bar with bras hanging from the ceiling, much like Waterfront Ale House, my favourite haunt when we lived in New York, where we got chatting (and Anna got dancing) with a group of people from all over the world. Anna asked me to order a glass of Prosecco for her and as I did so yet another American at the bar dropped a truth-bomb to the woman sitting next to him, “That’s all they do here; eat cheese and drink prosecco.”. This time it was too difficult, I couldn’t help bursting out laughing, but although it wouldn’t be my final interaction with a US citizen that night, however, it would be the last time I’d hear anything amusing from one. We got chatting to the people in this group, some from Columbia, Turkey, Israel, but eventually I got cornered by a the psychopath from Indiana, US and he was talking about some really dark shit while everyone else was enjoying themselves. I don’t know why I always seem to get stuck with people like this, maybe it’s just me taking a bullet for everyone else, but it was still a great night when I was able to get away from him.
The rest of the day after the gallery:

Friday, September 12, 2025
We’d done and seen a lot in Venice, but we found something a little off the beaten track for our final day; an old monastery that became an insane asylum on an island! Unfortunately the official website won’t open, but a small portion of this should do the trick:

Madness Locked Away: the Insane Asylum Museum of San Servolo

Inaugurated in 2006, first asylum museum in Italy, houses items from the Psychiatric Hospital, an institution that marked the history of the island from the early 1700s to 1978

The Museum’s purpose, implicit in the permanent exhibition title Madness Locked Away, is to highlight the marginalising and segregating aspect of the mental hospital through specific exhibits, descriptions and explanatory panels.

Through the history of the San Servolo Asylum, the oldest and largest in the Veneto region, the exhibition tells the condition of locked up patients and psychiatry’s approach to mental illness during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Before we could take the ferry over though, Anna needed a cannoli first, something she loves, but hadn’t had since we’d been in Italy. Once that had put a smile on her face we walked toward where we would be ferried across to the island and it immediately became clear that Venice is indeed sinking due to rising sea levels caused by climate change. The tide was obviously in, because as we walked along a canal the water was lapping at the actual buildings, some people just enjoying their coffee at outdoor tables while the water washed over their feet.

We made it onto the boat with our shoes relatively dry and it wasn’t too long be fore we were on the island of San Servolo, also home to Venice International University. The museum exhibition itself was fascinating, just rooms full of before and after photos of patients, medical devices, dissecting tables, sliced brains, and deformed skulls. It was nice and quiet on the island so once we were done with the exhibition we took a walk around the grounds before sailing back to the city.
A new area of Venice and some photos from the Madness Locked Away exhibition (YOU MIGHT WANT SCROLL PAST THE MEDICAL ONES IF YOU’RE A BIT SQUEAMISH):

We were now back on dry land so we meandered around different areas of the city, checked out a supermarket in an old church and passed a Burger King in an ancient building, until it was time to eat. It was our final night in Venice and on this trip as a whole so why not go out with a bang, opting for Bistrot de Venise. Anna made a booking and although it was a Venetian fine dining restaurant there was no issue with me rocking up in my wardrobe staples of shorts, t-shirt, and a cap, meaning we wouldn’t need to return to our hotel to get changed and then try to find our way back again. I can’t remember all of what we ordered, I assume it was from the Tasting Menu, but the photos and looking at the website’s menu may help you to figure out some of the dishes. Out of everything we ate on this European getaway this was probably the best meal of the entire trip, the perfect way to close out our time in France and Italy:

So now it’s 2026, I still haven’t had the chance to cover some other trips from 2025, particularly our stays in Taiwan and South Korea, hopefully I can get them done at some stage, but this year’s travel schedule looks even more insane! I can’t wait.