Ummm. I don't know. My answer to Giovanni's question about what I'm going to be doing with all that time I'm spending in Italy on my own. Umm, I don't know. Probably much the same as what I do here. Shop, eat, go out, not speak to anyone, look suspiciously at anyone who talks to me, daydream. Oh yeah, probably soaking up art and culture, but I'm not looking at any big life change -- I'm not expecting a torrid holiday romance or to suddenly fall in with a group of expatriated socialites. I'll do my best to resist the tourist entrapments of unfolded maps and cameras dangling around my neck, but I'll be a tourist and as it's hot hot hot there will no doubt look like the fat american abroad. No, it will be a trip of reading books, sightseeing, listening to my iPod and running the looping self-deprecating monologue in my head.



I'm training for it. Breaking in new walking shoes. Going to the gym. I'm considering self tanning my pasty white legs. Buying new luggage. Reading up about what do see and do and buy. Staying for five days in the seemingly beautiful Lungarno Suites on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence. Then a further five days in Rome at the Hotel Locarno in Rome. They're meant to be nice hotels. I'll need to spruce up a little.



I'm choking down the irony that my three closest mates here love Italy. Go all the time. Oh sure, they're all in relationships and much more seasoned travelers than I, and they speak the language, and I'm undoubtedly a pain in the arse to travel with, so it's not surprising I'm going on my own and once I'm there I'll choke down that chunk of irony with a glass of Chianti. Or several.



I'm looking forward to being severely intimidated by Italian men.



When I went to Greece on my own it seemed so brave. It was a "I'm conquering Europe and don't give a fuck" moment in my life. I wanted a beach holiday, no one else did, so I did it alone. It was heady, empowering. But two holidays later, and several pictures of buildings and places with no people (or indeed, no visual record that I was actually there) the solo explorer thing is old hat.



Crikey, I'll need to buy a hat. I've a head like a watermelon, and they're almost always unflattering, but last time I was in the sun I spent days peeling skin off my scalp. That will be fun.