It was the summer of my 13th birthday, in between the second and third (and last) year of Middle School, and my parents decided to do a little journey in Northern Italy. I was so excited: it was my first time outside of the island of Sardinia!

And the journey was off to a great start: we took the ferry from Porto Torres to Genoa for an entire night, with some particular waves, and, for the second of the only 2 times in my entire life, I got SEASICK (ironic for someone who pretends to be a pirate on YouTube)!! And it didn’t last only for the night or the next day… The ENTIRE WEEK of vacation! I was seasick for an entire week. It passed only when I took the ferry back to Sardinia. For the entire week, I could only eat at the McDonald’s of the cities we visited. You say: “Oh, so you ate hamburgers for a week? And you’re still this thin?” No… Ummm… When I was a kid, I was very picky with food and I didn’t eat any hamburger… “Then what did you eat?” Chicken McNuggets… An entire week of Chicken McNuggets and french fries.

I don’t recall the entire week. I remember that my mom (she’s a professional biologist) had to go to a convention or a 2-day course, so me and my father tagged along for a vacation. We traveled with my father’s car through Genoa, Siena, Verona, the amusement park of Gardaland, Bassano del Grappa, Vicenza, Padua and Venice.

I remember that one night, in the hotel room we were staying, we turned the TV on and the movie we saw, not for the first time by a long shot, was Waterworld! We made fun of how many times the Italian TV channel “Italia 1” showed that movie.

I recall that in Gardaland and Bassano del Grappa it was just me and my father. In Bassano del Grappa, we saw Ponte Vecchio, the wooden covered bridge on the Brenta River, and we bought an owl statuette for mom (she collects ‘em). In the amusement park of Gardaland, I was too seasick to ride any fun ride, so my father got really annoyed (on top of getting annoyed for the McDonald’s).

In Verona, we saw Juliet’s balcony! From William Shakespeare’s “Romeo & Juliet”!

In Siena, we saw the track were they make the Palio di Siena every year.

In Padua, we went to the Basilica of Saint Anthony of Padua, to whom my mother prayed a lot to have a child. And after 14 years of marriage, little Antonio Roberto Piras was born! Saint Anthony of Padua (or Sant’Antonio da Padova) is technically my Saint, but I always preferred the name Roberto, so my name-day is on September 17th.

In Venice, we saw the wonderful Piazza San Marco (St. Mark’s Square), with its famous columns and the Lion Statue, thousands and thousands of annoying pigeons, and we went on a literal quest in between all the canals to find Venice’s McDonald’s.

On the last day of vacation, before taking the ferry back, we stopped in Genoa and visited the world-famous Aquarium of Genoa. It was magnificent!