ROME — Almost outnumbering their customers, three waiters with no one to wait on leaned languidly in their starched white jackets against a table piled high with melons, pineapples and other fruit in the dining room of one of Rome's most famous haunts for Americans.
These days the Americans have vanished, leaving the staff forlorn at L'Originale Alfredo restaurant and many other businesses across Europe, which had grown accustomed to big-spending U.S. tourists.
A nose-diving dollar, fears of being terrorist targets and the anti-American sentiment that resounded across Europe during the Iraq war are combining to keep U.S. citizens away.
Fears of SARS, a potentially deadly respiratory illness, also get some blame, but since Europe has largely escaped the disease, the weaker dollar seems a more likely culprit.
It took 92 cents in late May 2002 to buy a euro. A year later it takes nearly $1.20. And Western Europe is rarely cheap, even when the dollar is strong.
"Foreign tourism has seen a big drop," said Andreas Balakakis, a Greek representative of the American Society of Travel Agents.
He singled out the war, which was widely opposed by the public in much of Western Europe, for hitting U.S. bookings hardest, with cruise business particularly affected.
"Certainly, Americans have a very marked sense of security," said Natascha Kompatzki, a spokeswoman for Berlin's tourist office, which said arrivals of American tourists were down 22 percent in March compared to March 2002.
Besides the effects of the war, Kompatzki said, there is "fear of terrorism in general, fear of flying in general, and, of course, the euro factor."
An Associated Press poll taken May 14-18 found most Americans didn't plan to let terrorism or the economy cancel vacation plans, though fewer would take planes.
One in 20 planned to cancel vacations, but only 27 percent said they would travel by plane, down a third from a year earlier, according to the poll conducted for the AP by ICR/International Communications Research of Media, Pa.
The drop in tourism to Europe isn't easy to categorize.
Kompatzki noted, for example, that tourist arrivals from Spain, which uses the euro, were also down 22 percent, while visitors increased strongly from Italy and France.
What seems universal is nostalgia for the American big spender.
"Five Americans spend as much as 100 Europeans," said Konstantinos Koufinakos, a Greek merchant married to an American.
Americans now "think about each cent before they spend it," said Anna-Maria Bonatsou, who owns a souvenir shop in Plaka, an ancient district at the foot of the Acropolis.
Sam Horton, in Greece on his senior high school trip from Oklahoma, said he and his friends were trying to "minimize our expense by eating gyros," a Greek fast food concoction of meat, vegetables and tangy sauce, instead of restaurant meals.
In Rome, Amanda Bayer, a seasoned traveler to Italy from Chicago, took a break from photographing the Pantheon to reflect on the battered dollar.
"I usually shop for gold in Florence, but this year everything was just too expensive," said Bayer.
Koufinakos, the Greek merchant, said he believes many Americans bypassed Greece after hearing about the nearly daily anti-war protests and marches.