During the two weeks I just spent in Sicily more than a few people said to me "You haven't watched White Lotus? You must watch White Lotus!"
I'm glad that I hadn't, and I used the long return home deviation from FCO to LAX to binge the entire season on the seatback screen. I feel like I dodged a bullet. Or at least was only grazed, because I managed to avoid much of the posing and 'gram-ing going on in our afternoon in Taormina.
Rather than stroll around being part of the throngs of people shopping for lingerie and fancy timepieces, I walked the seaside and took in the ocean views, with stops of course for €6 cups of three-euro gelato.
Best and worst moments balanced each other out -- I got up and left a 'pub' when the menu showed €3 covers and €12 bottled corporate beers, the waitstaff looking at me like I was the one that was crazy, while at the other end of the spectrum I went into a cheese-tasting shop and saw that they made fresh sandwiches, so I asked for one with prosciutto and the other ingredients of their choice that they think go with it, and they put together a delicious, and reasonably priced, wrapped lunch for me -- I asked if the park was this way or that way, and the counter guy said if you go 100 meters that way and turn left, you'll be able to enjoy your sandwich with one of the best views in Sicily in front of you.
And that's exactly what happened. While I sat on a bench in the park, smacking my lips over a fresh sandwich, pairs and throuples of carefully coiffed visitors went by recording themselves with the view in the background. They were duck-lipping and doing multiple takes of spontaneously laughing.
Among the statues in the park is a military vehicle that never quite got off the ground, a two-man submersible built like an extra long torpedo. "Cool!" a tourist bro yelled when he saw it. "It's like an early jet-ski!"
Did I revel in feeling smug about being a traveler instead of a tourist?
No, I did not.
Honestly, it made me even more self-conscious than usual. Am I any better than these other visitors? I didn't come here to take pics of myself in a famous place, but I did want to be able to know and tell my friends that I was in Taormina at the height of the season. Did I understand the history of this place and what was going on there now better than most who were making the scene? Yes. But I was also adding to the impact that the tourism business is having on a place that did not become what it was because of tourism.
On a wall in the kasbah of Mazara del Vallo a graffito read "Tourism Is Exploitation"
OK, fair enough -- am I one of the good exploiters, though?