For three weeks, my head had been buried in an iPhone, looking up only to read street signs and take the occasional landmark selfie. With plenty of travel apps available, I'm a less obvious tourist cliche than the bewildered map-reading dinosaurs. But, the same over-reliance on guides sucks the spontaneity out of travelling.
You're never going to "discover the secrets" of a city if 5000 TripAdvisor reviews have beaten you to it. Navigation, accommodation, degustation and participation all determined by an app. But the digital-aided successes were dotted with dismal failures.
The AirBnB apartment rental was paid months ago, the train tickets booked online, even the walk up the hill loaded on Google Maps. And then nothing. We dialled and redialled the phone number. More emails. We harassed locals in poor Italian, chasing the mysterious owner of the Cobalto Blue apartment. Nada. Did the staff of the driving school next door know our errant host? The receptionist didn't, neither did her colleague, the owner, the owner's mother, or the cleaner. Finally, a deliveryman ranted a series of Italian names and with a frantic waving of hands, calls were made to the property's manager.
It was a scene from Italian Fawlty Towers, minus the hotel. This would never have happened if I had just stumped up the cash for a hotel (or, given the Amalfi Coast hotel rates, a hostel). Travel technology had made me a sweaty, sunburned idiot reliant on a cast of colourful locals. Hours later, our host Carmen waddled up the path blaming everybody but herself.
Lesson learned: call, text and email your AirBnB host like a stalking ex-lover.
Our next tech failure was a blessing in disguise. Exploring Turkey's Cappadocia region by car, we stopped for food in Nevsehir, a city famous for nothing. Not to worry: we had TripAdvisor Offline City Guides to find the best-reviewed dinner destination. My face locked on to the screen's giant green arrow as it counted down the metres to the restaurant.. Around and around we walked. The green arrow spun itself into a daze. Just 20m away! No, wait, turn around! Now just 300m that way! This desert city had mirages aplenty. "Hello! My friend!" came a call. Was it our long-lost waiter from the restaurant for the navigationally challenged? Nope. The welcomes were from locals lining up to break their Ramadan fast outside a mosque. They insisted we join. Not wanting to seem ungrateful and with scant chance of another meal, we joined their queue. I turned my phone off. The staring intensified as we entered the hall, we looked every inch the outsiders. Our host was an Iraqi refugee-come-personal trainer and offered to show us the highlights of Nevsehir. "There aren't any! Why are you even here?" he laughed. Ahmed was the happiest host we met. He recounted the history of Ramadan and weighed in on the Syrian civil war, between mouthfuls of curried meat and a semolina dessert. It was a genuine, spontaneous and fulfilling highlight of our trip - now where do I find the app for that?