The Great Museum-Off

Some experienced travellers claim you can't gain a true understanding of the world's myriad peoples by visiting museums, and that only by walking the streets and interacting with the locals will you really be able to appreciate foreign cultures.

But a lot of the time, the locals don't know anything and the streets are too strewn with innuendo to be of any cultural value. That's why sometimes, to truly appreciate a civilisation, you do need to visit a sterile museum and look at endless identical vases behind glass, viewed through the gaps in a Japanese crowd.

Travel evidence - Italy

I owned a digital camera for a brief time last year and had fun documenting my activities in and around Edinburgh. But then one night I got ludicrously drunk and the camera was one of several casualties (deservedly, I felt).

I didn't feel the need to buy a new camera to document my travels, mainly because there are already so many photos of the places I'm going to that are a lot prettier than any I would be capable of taking. Still, it's nice to have a few mementos of the things I've done and the people I've met, and it's always satisfying to use other peoples' resources, isn't it?

So here are some other peoples' photos to prove I was in Italy. It's taken a while just to get these few, so hopefully more can be added in the future (answer my emails, Pompeii people).

Note: Above photo may not be genuine.

Free Firenze

It's nice to pretend you're not a tourist sometimes, even when your skin is 7,000% paler than the locals and the extent of your Italian vocabulary comes entirely from the first of two pages of key phrases that you hastily printed out before leaving the UK as a flimsy attempt to assuage your post-colonial guilt by pretending you were ever going to learn more. You didn't even make it to page two, did you? I hate you.

Luckily, it turned out my last full day in Florence coincided with several unrelated national holidays and local events that most tourists seemed oblivious to, but which were a great way to tick off some galleries and museums I otherwise would have felt a bit hard-pressed to pay for. There was also plenty of free fruit drink and chocolate milkshake available - oh Florence, you are spoiling us.

Sunday was my best day in Florence by far, more than making up for the initial disappointment I had when confronted with the mental traffic and pollution after spending five days in snow-globe Venice. Thanks to my friend Sofi having put more effort and passion into researching the Renaissance masters than my own minimal contribution (which involved tracking down the four namesakes of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the various museums, galleries and churches of the city on Friday), I was able to really appreciate the great sculptures of the Borgello and enjoy some rare proper food in the evening, without having to contribute to Florence's economy - take that, Florentines!