Ugly Americans

Americans get the brunt of Italians' disdain for tourists (this despite the place being overrun by entitled Brits for two centuries, but I digress) and most of the blame rests with Yankee students run amok.

Italian restaurateurs tell stories of prissy daughters who go to lunch with their parents for their first day in Florence. By the next night, after the parents are gone, the girl is puking in the street after much too much to drink. Who can resist a legal drinking age of 16? Not us!

So...the city is opening a sort of community center at Palazzo Giovane to keep foreign students out of trouble: "We want to offer a unique experience of citizenship to these young people and not a 'Disneyland' ride through a world of globalized partying, where context is cancelled in the haze of alcohol and the particulars of such an experience are lost in a drunken stupor," wrote Cristina Giachi in The Florentine.

Sigh.