Travel News to Know - June 13

+ Italy packing, protests, Boeing, summer travel

Good morning -

Looking back, every year around this time I’ve written about how to handle summer travel. Not much new to say there. It’s still wise to move around less, spend your money locally (not at chains), and to get a good travel credit card with insurance. Check out these past posts for more tips.

What to do about overtourism this summer

Summer travel madness and how to deal

And if you’re looking for alternative destinations in Italy, consider these. In the U.S., Door County is busy in the summer, but I’m going to recommend it anyway because I love it (probably better to go in October though). It’s hot in Italy, but hotter in Louisiana. Kind of missing summer in the South (snoballs!)

Next week, we’re going to talk about your rights going into the U.S. Any specific questions about that you would like me to look into? Prepping for my own trip home and I have mixed feelings.

Wherever you’re traveling this summer, you can find all my tips organized by country here.

Visiting Italy this summer? Here are five things to pack:

• Comfortable walking shoes. I’ve had too many visitors try to bring cute sandals that hurt their feet after a day of walking. You walk SO much here, and on cobblestones that can be slippery or hurt your feet. New Balance, Sambas and Superga are all popular here, if you really want to fit in, but any cute and comfortable tennis shoes work.

• A crossbody bag or fanny pack. I have this Uniqlo bag (me and half of Europe). It fits a surprising amount. I even use it as a diaper bag and still have space.

• Laundry detergent sheets. Don’t overpack and instead wash your clothes in the sink. It’s very hot here already and you might want to refresh some things. (Also extremely useful if you travel with a messy baby.)

• I don’t carry a water bottle around Italy because I hate carrying extra things, but if you like to have water around at all times and don’t believe Europeans drink water (lol) this one folds up.

• Travel adapter and extra long phone charger cord (for trains and airports).

And a necessity I would wait to buy until you get here:

• Sunscreen! European sunscreen is better. My favorite is La Roche-Posay Cicaplast Baume B5+ SPF 50 (thick, if you have dry skin like me). Available at every pharmacy. I also love anything from Isdin. Not available in Italy, but Skin Aqua, a Japanese sunscreen that’s very light, is another favorite that you can order to the U.S.. For any sunscreen/skincare geeks, Emily Morello’s newsletter is amazing. Here’s a spreadsheet she put together of her favorite skincare products (see: cicaplast).

Travel News to Know

• Anti-ICE protests. It’s been a bleak week of news, especially in the U.S. If there's any consolation, it’s that not everyone in the military wants to be deployed against civilians (Guardian article). I live next to a U.S. Army base in Italy and have been speaking with people about this all week, and have yet to find someone excited about it. A few things to remember:

  • The protests around the country have been mostly peaceful.

  • Protests are concentrated in small areas. Watching the news from afar it seems like all of LA and Chicago are in crisis, but these are big cities and the protests cover a few blocks Someone asked me if they should cancel their trip to Chicago. Definitely not!

  • Migration is a form of travel that most people are lucky they never have to do unless they want to.

  • If you saw all this in any other country — soldiers sent to crush dissent, union leaders arrested, opposition politicians threatened — it would be clear that autocracy had arrived.

  • For anyone attending “No Kings” protests this weekend, here are some safety tips.

    • Related: How the abnormal gets normalized, and what to do about it. Tips for staying engaged when it’s so much easier to tune out.

• Immigration isn’t only a U.S. issue. Italy held a referendum on easing the process to become a citizen. It failed due to low turnout. If it had passed, about half of Italy’s 5.4 million foreign residents could have been eligible to apply for citizenship.

• An Air India Boeing 787 flight crashed yesterday, killing 241 people. One person survived. India is considering grounding Air India’s fleet. Last year, a former Boeing engineer urged the company to ground all 787 Dreamliners due to safety concerns. They were ignored. This crash comes just a month after Boeing agreed to pay $1.1 billion to avoid prosecution for two crashes that together killed 346 people. I put this timeline together last year but it looks like I need to update it.

Should you fly on a Boeing plane?

• Anti-Tourism protests are planned across Europe this weekend, including cities in Spain, Italy and Portugal. The protests are directed at governments, which protesters want to implement stricter regulations (like banning Airbnb) to curb tourism and increase quality of life for residents. “Our actions are not against tourists. They’re against the economic model we have based on tourism,” Pere Joan, a spokesperson for a Mallorca-based activist group, told AFAR. Protests could obstruct popular tourist sites or cause minor delays for tour buses.

• Discount carrier Play Airlines will suspend all flights to the U.S. in October

Weekend Reading

• These street food vendors used their agua frescas to fight tear gas at anti-ICE protests

• ICE immigration raids shift to Ventura County farmworkers (more than 50% of produce in the U.S. comes from Ventura, Kern, and Tulare counties)

• On the great Moka Pot scandal (fascinating! And some great points in here. My knowledge of the Moka Pot is exclusively Italian, so it was funny to read about another culture’s experience with it.)

• Chasing virality is ruining Italy

• Naples is tired of being portrayed as lawless

Thanks for reading!

-Rebecca 💛