The Italian vacation season doesn’t look good. The TimesOnline informs us:
At Montecatini in Tuscany, famous for its thermal baths, hotels saw a 13% fall in visitors in the first four months of the year, with the number of foreigners down by 14%: Americans stayed away in droves, while Germans headed for cheaper destinations such as Croatia.
It didn’t help that a Japanese couple recently complained about being charged $280 for a single plate of Pasta at a Rome Restaurant recently.
What did Signor Berlusconi do to jack up tourism? He appointed a new tourism minister, Michela Brambilla, a 41 year old former beauty queen and redhead (nicknamed La Rossa). Much of the media seemed to take Brambilla to be a self-serving appointment by the lusty and unsaintly Mr. Berlusconi. Google her name and you may find pictures of her which seem to trumpet the assumption (unmutedly); in many photos she wears those garterless thigh-high stockings with the elastic tops which don’t, as they sometimes do with less “fit” women, make her exposed thighs look like the bloated torso of the Michelin man. Good for her.
But that’s a bit of an unfair characterization. Wikipedia informs us: “She is the general executive manager of Trafilerie Brambilla spa, a steel manufacturing firm, and is president of two businesses with her father Vittorio: Sal Group spa and Sotra Coast International.”
So, she’s got credentials and legs. I like that. And she has evidently started a program “to stop her fellow countrymen ripping off holidaymakers.”
That would be good.
But, perhaps as a counter to Berlusconi’s animal instinct, she counts an enormous menagerie of cats, dogs, and “200 pigeons” as her “pets.” It is no wonder than that her claim to fame so far includes setting up a website for pet-friendly lodging. If I am not mistaken, it’s called in Vacanza con Fido, a clever but not very SEO friendly title.
Let’s hope it works. But listen up La Rossa, if I hear of a pooch getting charged $450 for a plate of crummy biscuits, I’ll be all over you, ya hear?
(And I am no saint either, as my poor mother always reminds me….)