The second visit

Sunday Espresso II.

Buona domenica!

Family came in from Hungary last weekend. Not their first time in Italy, but their first time in Versilia, and so it began the way every first trip begins: in Pisa. Once they had the selfie, we picked them up and drove back to our home in Pietrasanta.

The timing was lucky. Tonfano, the slice of Marina di Pietrasanta where we live, runs its flower festival every first weekend of May, and this year it landed on top of International Workers’ Day and Mother’s Day. A normally quiet stretch of town filled up with people coming down from the Apuan Alps, from Milan, from Florence. There was even an antique market on the piazza.

Until that morning, our guests had been moving the way most first-timers do in Italy, especially Americans, who are by far the craziest about their itineraries: Florence, Venice, Rome, Como, Verona, Siena, plus a wine tour and a boat ride, all in seven days. Read any Reddit travel-planning thread, and you’ll find the same itinerary, laid out with absolute…