My unforgettable first visit to Italy! And a well-planned joke that failed

Even though I had dreamed of going to Italy starting when I was about 10 years old, it wasn’t until I was 43 years old when I made my first trip there. Wow, that was 30 years ago, because I just had my 73^rd birthday. Today I want to revisit that first visit.

I was a high school teacher of various subjects at Peninsula High School in Gig Harbor. I was teaching English, journalism, graphic design and photography. It was June of 1996. Our daughter, Sandy, was finishing a one-year stay in Bydgoszcz, Poland, as a Rotary Club exchange student for her junior year of high school. She called us long distance and said she wanted to end her stay in Poland by traveling to some other European countries, including Italy.

Whoa, whoa, wait just a minute! It had been hard enough to let our little girl spend a year abroad, but at least she was staying with Rotary Club families. Now she wanted to go to Italy with a friend, another 17-year-old girl. Isn’t Italy the place where men sometimes pinch girls in the butt? Isn’t there some famous photo of Italian men leering at an American woman as she walks along the sidewalk?

Inside the Colosseum in Roma

Sandy tried to reassure us that she and her friend were now experienced travelers and knew how to take care of themselves. She said it would be a shame for her to go all the way to Europe and not get to see at least one other country. Oh my gosh, what do we tell her? We said we’d think about it and get back to her.

As soon as we hung up the phone, Lucy said: “It’s obvious what we need to do.”

“Yep,” I said, “Of course we can’t let do that. She’ll be disappointed, but at least she’ll be safe.”

“No, no,” Lucy said. “That’s not what I mean. She should go. But you should go with her. You should meet her in Italy. You’ve always dreamed of going to Italy and meeting your relatives.”

I laughed. “That’s crazy. That’s only 20 days away. I don’t have a passport. My school won’t even be out when she gets to Italy. I’ll have to turn in my grades early. How am I going to find a substitute for the last three days of school? It’s a nice dream, but there’s no way it can happen.”

But Lucy is a determined woman, and she set out to make it happen. She got me an expedited passport. She booked my flight. She packed my suitcases. She made a reservation at a hostel in Venice.

Meanwhile, I worked feverishly to finish my grading and write instructions for my substitute. It was all a blur.

However, we did take the time to plan a devious practical joke. We told Sandy that we had contacted our relatives in Italy, and one of them, Pietro Spadoni, would meet her in Venice to be her escort. Meanwhile, I grew a mustache, or as much of one I could grow in two weeks. I never wore hats, but Lucy bought me a fedora. I practiced a fake Italian accent.

I was going to impersonate my cousin Pietro and meet Sandy at the hostel in Venice. In truth, I didn’t even know if we had a cousin named Pietro, but it seemed to be a likely name.

Somehow, it all came together. I basically went from my classroom to the airport, boarded a plane, fell asleep from exhaustion and landed in Venice. It was my first time in Europe, and I exited the airport gate in a daze, only to be greeted by a cacophony of aggressive men offering me hotel rooms, and transportation by water taxi and regular taxi. I took a deep breath, shook my head at every offer, and went to the information desk to ask how to get to the city. They recommended I take a blue bus and told me where to go to catch it. I wondered how a bus could take me to an island—that’s how little I knew about Venice—but it turns out there is a bridge. And the bus took me right to Venice.

Once again my senses were assailed, by sounds, smells and visual wonders. Vendors were selling purses, trinkets and these fascinating little dancing Mickey and Minnie mouse cardboard cutouts, which I have to confess, I eventually bought. But again, I sought out an information booth, and I was given directions to my hostel.

I arrived a couple of hours before my designated meeting time with Sandy, and after exploring the neighborhood, I put my plan into action. I donned my fedora and sat in the lobby, watching and waiting. And there she was.

“Buongiorno,” I said. “You must-a be Sandra Spadoni. I am-a you cugino, Pietro. Benvenuta in Italia!”

Her eyes grew wide. She blinked. She took a step back. “Wow!” she said. “I can’t believe it! This is amazing. You look so much like my dad.”

“He must-a be one helluva good looking uomo,” I answered.

That’s . . . how I imagined our conversation would go, but in reality, it went quite differently.

“Dad,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“No, no! Non sono tuo padre. Sono tuo cugino, your cousin.”

“No, you’re my dad. Where’d you get the silly hat? And what’s that fuzz on your upper lip?”

I had to give up. But the joy of being together with Sandy wiped away any disappointment about my gag not working.

Moments later, we were devouring triple scoop gelatos—gelati—together and laughing about my failed efforts.

“Weren’t you fooled for just a few seconds?” I asked.

“Come on, you’re my papa. I hope I can always recognize you, even with a fedora and a patchy mustache. But it still was a shock to see you, and it was a great joke.”

The magic of Venezia so overcame me that I quickly forgave her for calling my mustache patchy. In my memory, it was a full bush of pure manliness!

We spent a full day in Venice, and then went on to Florence, and then Montecatini, where we met our cousins, including the real Pietro Spadoni! He did look a bit like me, but without the amazing mustache and fedora. And it turns out that almost nobody in Italy actually wears a fedora.

We spent a wonderful week with second cousin Enrico Spadoni and his wife Enza and their family. They treated us to banquet after banquet of exquisite home-cooked meals—risotto, pasta asciutta, Bistecca Fiorentina, lasagna, always with wine and a mouth-watering dolce at the end. We met a ton of other cousins, and they showed us around the area where my grandparents had lived. We also traveled on our own to Pisa, Rome and Lake Como.

Sandra and the Obelisk of Axum
that Rome stole from Ethiopia
a couple of centuries ago (and
returned in 2005).

I could speak a little Italian, and Enrico and Enza’s daughter Alessandra spoke some English. I thought their son Simone did as well, as he initially asked me a series of questions about my family, my hobbies and my taste in music. I used my limited Italian words to ask him the same questions about himself. And then we grew quiet. We realized we had used up all of our knowledge about the other’s language in about two minutes. We wanted to ask many more questions, but the words just weren’t there.

We did have one cousin who spoke English well, and I used Gianfranco to help me translate a message I wanted to say to my relatives on the day we departed. It went like this:

“My family instilled pride in me at an early age in being Italian and in all things that are Italian. Because of this, I have always wanted to come here, not just to see the famous sites but to understand what it is like to live as an Italian. Someday I hope to return, not just for a visit, but to live here long enough to really understand the day-to-day lifestyle of the people. Thank you so much for your hospitality and for sharing your lives with us.”

In the fall of 2001, that hope become a reality. Sort of. I did spend a year in Italy, teaching at a British elementary school in Padova. That adventure is the topic of a memoir I wrote in 2017, An American Family in Italy: Living la Dolce Vita without Permission. That year wasn’t enough. When I retired from teaching in 2011, Lucy and I began coming to Italy every year, which culminated in our purchasing a home in the exquisite borgo of Montecarlo in 2015. And here we are today, dividing time annually between Gig Harbor and Montecarlo.