Hapless and totally app-less
A digital detox was in order, so Josh Martin tested out a wireless weekend away.
Some looked down at theirs and smiled, others showed off their new arrival to a friend, as we passed through security one doting dad did not want to let his go. The early mornings at the airport were too much for one woman as she scalded hers for being too slow.
I looked on with more than a sliver of envy. While nearly all of my fellow travellers at London city’s departure lounge were engaged (some enraged) with their smartphones, I was to be digitally barren this weekend: no iPad, no camera, no smartphones, no smart-watches … I was beginning to think, for a digitally savvy traveller, this was not a smart thing to do for a long weekend in Sicily.
I’m a big advocate of exploiting the internet when travelling – using it for everything from meeting locals for dinner on EatWith, navigating a TripAdvisor tour from my phone, to butchering French phrases using Google Translate. Not to mention booking the whole thing online and snapping and sharing photos on social media. It was this final point that made me enthusiastic to try a digital detox. Only for three days.
On our last trip to Sicily we had taken an evening cruise around the volcanic island of Stromboli to witness its evening eruptions. An amazing experience, but one I can only recount by looking at grainy shots taken on my DSLR camera. My strongest memory is being frustrated that I hadn’t properly studied the user manual.
According to studies I’m not alone in this corrosion of memory. Research from Fairfield University in Connecticut found, after the research group toured a museum and either photographed or simply observed installations, the tourists could better recognise the next day the objects they had not photographed. Put simply, when straining to take the perfect pic, you could be simultaneously outsourcing your memory and focus functions to your camera’s SD card.
So could I walk the walk? Being a chronic planner I did have some idea of the sights of Sicily I wanted to squeeze in to a 48-hour trip, but with my devices all dead, my note-taking skills were put to the test.
I was lounging in the Sicilian sun beside a grand hotel pool, with an active volcano smouldering behind me, and an Etna Spritz in hand. Winter had arrived in England and dragged on in New Zealand. My hand reached out t for a device to tell the world: ‘‘Look at me.’’ Everyone hates the skite who posts something poolside like ‘‘Nice office view today’’ ... until it’s you. I resisted the call to keep-up-with-the-Jones’ and was rewarded; devoid of the subsequent panging need for approval.
But just as the Hotel Grand Timeo provided reasons to gloat, it also provided solutions where my planning notes failed. ‘‘Mr Martin, I have called around and your tour up to Mount Etna is booked in for tomorrow,’’ greeted my new best friend, Antonio. This guy was a saviour for scouring his contacts for the best excursions.
I ordered a wake up call for the first time. Restaurant recommendations were crowdsourced – from a physical crowd. Entrees were Instagram-free. My eyes darted between a tourist map of Taormina and squinted back toward a faded street sign. Email ignorance truly was bliss.
Sure, this digital detox was slower, spontaneous and more expensive but I was getting the hang of it. Checking in for our flight in person? How retro. I was a tech free wanderer, and had found a new way to be smug on holiday. And then the limit was exceeded.
‘‘The flight to Heathrow is gone. Gate closed,’’ said an Alitalia man, with sympathy levels of a parking warden. Our connection time in Rome had been cut in half after weather delays. Stranded. ‘‘We’ll give you a hotel here and put you on the next flight tomorrow at ... 2:30pm,’’ sighed our customer rep.
At this point the digital detox dies a sudden death as I dive into half a dozen apps to prove to our friend behind the desk that between two major European cities there are several flights leaving in the morning – just all at prices his airline would rather not pay. It takes a trip to another ticketing desk to squeeze a couple of seats on a next-morning British Airways flight out of them.
Real-time, readily-accessible information levels the playing field towards the customer. I’ve won the spar, with my trusty Samsung. With its screens of apps and cameras it may distract me from memory-making on holiday, but this was a scene I was all too happy to forget.