The Italian Club that my son Brendan was in was going on a 10-day trip to Italy. He was in 11^th grade, and the club had raised money for years to go on this trip. His cousins Rocco and Ashli were part of the club, and their parents were going, too. My wife Mary Grace was to go as a chaperone. So I figured what the hell, I’d pay for my daughter Michaela and I to go along.

We flew from JFK Airport to Rome. Ashli was terrified of flying, so I sat next to her. I told her to take off her shoes and rub her feet back and forth on the carpet. I held her hand during takeoff and tried to make her laugh by telling jokes from the movie “Airplane” – you know, “Shirley you must be kidding.”

Rome was a blast. But before we hit the city, there was a little trouble on the bus. My nephew Rocco and I had this game we used to play where we stomp, run at each other, holding our hands on our heads like bullhorns, and bump our chests at each other. This is not a game you should play on a bus. When we bumped our chests together, my head hit the overhead rack on the bus and I started to bleed profusely. I quickly put my baseball cap on and told Rocco not to say anything to my wife. I was a little dizzy but I managed to get off the bus and check into our hotel. After a while my wife asked me to take off “that hat” because we were getting ready to tour Rome. When I did and she saw the gash, and the blood, she screamed “What the hell did you do?” I said “It’s nothing, don’t worry about it,” but she knew I’d done something stupid. I cleaned up as best as I could and went out on the street, hat-less with a headache.

It was April 2004 and it was busy there. We stayed away from the subway cars due to a recent subway bombing in Spain. So there we were, 40 of us, walking down the streets, checking out the Coliseum, the Spanish Steps, the ancient ruins. The kids were well behaved, but at the Coliseum I reenacted my bullfight with my nephew. It felt like the right place to do it, and there was no rack I could hit my head on. Mary Grace yelled at me to cut the shit out.

We took a bus for an overnight trip to Sorrento, a beautiful city on a hill with lemon groves all around. We took a boat to Capri and it was beautiful. The water was the bluest water I’ve ever seen. We took a cable car up a steep hill and on top, we stepped into a huge piazza filled with Italians all talking on their cell phones. We had lunch at a great pizza place where my nephew Rocco tried to stack up eight slices of pizza to fit in his mouth all at once. We egged him on, of course. He almost lost it all on the boat ride back – but he did it.

Meanwhile back in Sorrento my brother-in-law, also named Rocco, was sitting on a bench enjoying the scenery. He had decided not to go to Capri. As he sat on the bench, smoking a cigar, two American girls came up and asked to have their picture taken with him. They thought he was a native. He nodded, and they took about a dozen photos with him, one at a time next to him. He’s a big guy, and they sat on either side of him. He never said a word, since he didn’t speak any Italian at all.

Michaela was three years younger than most of the kids on the trip, so she was having a hard time. She felt left out and was having some reaction to a medication she was on that left her feeling depressed. Before the trip I had promised her I would take her out on a Vespa ride. Little did I know that Vespas aren’t easily available for tourists. While we were in Florence, I had the Italian teacher, Donna Ehhmann, call around to try to find a place to rent one. She finally found a place and, after much discussion and shouting, she got the guy to agree to rent me a Vespa. The place was only two miles from our hotel, so Michaela and I walked there. When we arrived, Michaela, who was semi-fluent in Italian at the time, explained what we were there for. After much discussion, his misgivings were calmed by an off-the books currency exchange.

I tried to put on the helmet, but apparently, Italians have really small heads. I definitely do not. I wedged it on like a funny looking yamaka. Michaela put hers on. We sat on the bike and started the engine. I turned the throttle on the handlebar but nothing happened. I kept turning it further and further and still nothing happened. Finally it caught and we shot forward like a rocket. My left leg flew out and kicked a parked Vespa, which immediately fell over and knocked over an entire row of Vespas like crunchy metal dominoes. The owner didn’t see it because he was in the office, and Michaela shouted “Dad, should we go back and pick them up?” I said “Hell, no” and I kept on driving.

This is before GPS or Google search, so for navigation we were on our own. I circled around for a while. We were cramped: I’m 6’4” and Michaela’s 5’9” so it was tight on the Vespa. Suddenly, Michaela looked up and saw a sign that said Cristoforo Colombo Autostrada, which means Christopher Columbus Highway, or loosely translated, Holy Shit We’re On a Highway. Michaela kept shouting in my ear, “Dad, we’re on a highway! We’re heading to the airport!”  Cars flew by us; Italian drivers are worse than Boston drivers, and no one would let me get over to the right. I kept trying to move over, but everyone was honking at us. Quite a few of them gave me the universal middle finger.

I finally made it over to the right lane and made a desperate turn and managed to turn into a shopping mall parking lot. Then we headed back out onto the highway in the other direction so we could get back to Florence. I kept thinking “Oh my god, Mary Grace is going to kill me. Michaela’s going to die. We’re both going to die.” Michaela kept shouting “Dad, we’re back on the highway again!” but I had to keep going because that was the only way I knew to get back where we started. This time I stayed in the right lane and took the first right turn I could to get off the highway.

But a series of one-way turns put me right back on the Cristoforo Colombo Autostrada. Michaela shouted “Dad, we’re back on the highway again!” as she held on tightly to me. I said “I know we are, Goddammit.”

I kept our speed kind of slow because I was so nervous, and drivers blared their horns at us. We knew we had rented near the Duomo, a major, domed tourist attraction in the center of the city, so I looked for that in the skyline. I kept making a series of turns off the highway, trying to keep the Duomo in sight. I felt like we were completely lost, when I finally turned a corner and saw our entire group from Troy High Italian Club right in front of us. Michaela and I acted normal, as if we had planned this route the whole time. 

Michaela got off the Vespa and my niece Ashli asked for a ride. I figured I could stay away from the highway this time, and I had 30 minutes to return the bike. So Ashli put on Michaela’s helmet and we took off, staying away from the highway, and then returned the Vespa. The owner looked at Ashli kind of funny, since she was a different girl than the one I left with. He didn’t say anything about the toppled Vespa dominoes. I handed him the keys and walked away.

Ashli hadn’t made it to the top of the Duomo yet, and we had 20 minutes before it closed. So we ran, and bought the last two tickets of the day. The Duomo dome has 524 steps inside leading to the top, where you get a view of the whole city and the entire valley for miles. We climbed the steps as fast as we could, leaning into the domed shape, and made it to the top. We did all the viewing in 60 seconds and headed back down again. 

My day in Florence ended with an interesting moment in the men’s room. It seems that Italians build their bathrooms the same way they make their helmets. Once again, I was too big for the situation. I was standing at a urinal and casually looked over to my right and saw a woman seated on a toilet. It seemed the divider between the men’s room and ladies room was built for short Italian men. She saw me looking, so I just flushed and ran.