A family road trip through Covid-19-hit Europe – one-off experience or a taste of things to come?
- With flights between Britain and Greece suspended, the author drove across the continent to reach the family holiday home in Corfu
- The journey offered a rare chance to visit Florence, Pompeii and the Amalfi Coast at the height of summer but without the crowds
“My goodness. Are you really tourists from England?” asks a middle-aged Italian woman with a theatrical throw of her arms in the emptiness of one of the city’s best-loved pizzerias.
As we nod our nervous confirmation – fearing this may be a prelude to a dressing down for having come to Italy in the middle of a pandemic – she breaks into a broad grin and declares: “Then welcome to Florence. We must roll out the red carpet for you.”
Like every scene in this strangest of summers, our reception at a deserted restaurant on an early July evening is a unique and possibly never-to-be repeated experience on a continent where – for most citizens – the sight of British tourists waddling into view is usually as welcome as an outbreak of bubonic plague. Or Covid-19.
Only last July, Venice was considering limiting tourist numbers as the city and its gondolas groaned beneath the weight – and girth – of international arrivals, while the streets of Florence sweltered in insufferable heat as more than a million foreign visitors thronged its narrow streets and jostled shoulder to shoulder across the Ponte Vecchio bridge.
