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.
Then everything changed. Italy went into lockdown, followed by countries across Europe. By the time a tentative reopening of borders began, in late June, the mood of everyone in a world decimated by death and infection had been utterly transformed. For a summer, at least.
