Throughout Europe — on medieval ramparts, in churches, produce markets, alpine farmsteads, and seaside villages — the local culture thrives while tourists sleep.

I'll never forget waking up with the locals on the Italian Riviera in the off-season. The morning sun touched the tip of Vernazza's bell tower and greeted a sleepy village. There was a refreshingly damp cool in the air and a rare Italian silence. The harbor square was quiet. The lady whose husband was out all night fishing beckoned me to her fish-filled wheelbarrow. Sorting through the wheelbarrow like it's a sale bin at the mall, she showed her "frutti di mare" — mixed seafood — from tiny red snapper, eel, octopus to pesce azzurro ("blue fish").

Picking up a shiny 6-inch anchovy and threatening me with it, as if it were a rattlesnake, she said, "This was swimming this morning at 3 a.m. He will be dinner tonight, maybe for you."