Coins in a Fountain

When I said I was traveling to Italy in a week my hip acquaintance raised his eyebrow.

"Are you going to live there?" he asked. "Or are you just going for a Three Coins in a Fountain-style pilgrimmage."

I read between the lines of his arch question. If I said I was going to Italy to live, I'd win respect. But if I owned up to the latter choice I'd be lumped with the fanny-pack-toting masses. What's wrong with a pilgrimage? I thought. So what if I want to visit all the obvious sites? I wanted to smite the snob and be proud of my tourist intentions, but I chickened out.

"I guess we're living there," I said nonchalantly. Then I changed the subject.

When my parents were in Venice 30 years ago, they went to see Rodin's statue The Thinker. As they waited to see the statue, they saw an American couple walking in the opposite direction. "Rodin's Thinker, check!" the woman said as the man crossed something off in a guide book.

In my family, the Rodin's Thinker couple were always the bad example. You should never be so focused on plowing through a place that you forget to really see. But it's possible to be too fervent about avoiding the obvious. As a tourist, its hard to find the middle ground between turning foreign lands into amusement parks and shunning the justly famous. After all, there's a reason everyone visits the Duomo in Florence.

The scene around the Trevi Fountain of Three Coins in a Fountain fame embodies all sophisticates find distasteful about gaudy tourism. The fountain itself is a stone explosion of opulently muscled men and writhing horses. The steps surrounding the fountain are always thronged with tourists and those who profit from the free flow of lire.

According to the myth, anyone who tosses a coin over their shoulder and into the fountain's pool will someday return to Rome. If this is true, then nearly every tour bus that chugs through the narrow streets is full of return visitors. Tossing a coin in the Trevi Fountain probably ranks near the top of any tourists Rome checklist, right after the Vatican, the Parthenon and the McDonald's at the Spanish Steps. At night, the dark snaps with camera flashes as tourists capture their ceremonial coin toss on film.

My first visit to the Trevi Fountain was at night after a long outdoor dinner at a small trattoria. My friends and I were swigging from an open bottle of red wine, and we'd polished off a couple more bottles with dinner. The air was warm, and it smelled of spring. We were happy to be where we were.

We sat on the stone steps in front of the fountain and took in the scene. Young men in white dress shirts sold browning roses from plastic buckets. Tourists of all ages were crowding the fountain's edge to toss their coins. A group of Japanese girls took turns throwing coins over their shoulders while their friends giggled. An old Italian couple sat close, holding hands.

Remembering the scene now, it sounds hokey, and it was. But still, it was touching. All those people were there from so many different places to share an experience. My acquaintance was joking, but in the end, he was right. Our visit to the fountain did feel like a pilgramage. And we all made sure to toss our coins before we left that night.