Tourist

But which shower to choose? There are two on your floor of the pensione, each curtainless, one so small and steamy that you have to leave the door ajar and risk a stranger bursting in — a stranger, probably, who will squawk at you in Italian — the other so eccentric that water sprays all over the walls and your nearly new dressing gown and trickles into the passage. Which shower shall I try today? you would like to ask someone... Which shower shall I try today? you say in your head, jokey, so that whoever is listening can have no inkling of the small panic that underlies the silly question. Perhaps, after all, you should have played safe and booked into a hotel? But, as you put it to them back home in the tea room during one of those sessions when you examined your plans from every angle, hogging the tea break probably but that is a traveller's privilege, of course I can afford a hotel, you said, but pensione in Rome sounds more fun. Well of course a pensione is more fun! came their prompt reply. More fun. More real. Let your hair down properly while you're about it — and you saw them exchange smiles. Be a devil! Take the plunge! Where's your sense of adventure?