(“Aw, but he does, honey. You just have to hold the turkey baster up to the sunlight.”)

Remember how Forks, Washington became a tourist attraction because Twilight was set there?  Well now the same thing is happening to Volterra, Italy, a setting of New Moon.  The Volturi scenes in the movie were actually shot in Montepulciano, but these are fans of an abstinent, vegetarian vampire we’re talking here.

On a college break, American teenager Kiersten Kunke and her friend, Canadian Stephanie Regier, plot their version of an Italian Grand Tour. On their must-see list: Florence, Venice, Rome — and Volterra?
This small Tuscan city with an ancient Etruscan history has become a cult destination among traveling teenagers and people in their 20s (not to mention some vampire-loving mothers), thanks to Twilight.
Kunke, 19, found Volterra on a map as soon as she read New Moon. “I was like, I have to go there,” says the native of Portland, Ore. “It was just one of those things I had to do.” [Like the freshman 15. -Ed.]
The only English speakers in a group of Italian Twilight fans, Kunke and Regier giggle and snap photos in Volterra’s narrow alleys, trying to scare each other. “Omigod, is that a bat?” Kunke says.
Riolo leads the tour into a dark building, where they walk down a clammy staircase. Waiting at the bottom: two cloaked men and a small woman, all deathly pale. “The Volturi!” Regier gasps.
The vampires walk silently among the tourists, pulling “victims” up on a stone table. The girls huddle closer together. “This is creepy,” Kunke whispers — before a vampire grabs Regier. As he attempts to bite her, she dissolves into laughter.
After the tableau, the tour-goers relive their New Moon moments over drinks. Turns out that the actors who played the Volturi are members of Compagnia della Fortezza — a theater troupe of convicts named after Volterra’s Medici-era fortress-turned-prison. [USAToday]

Man, how awesome would it be if one of these chicks obsessed with chaste, sparkling white, pussy-whipped vampires ended up getting raped by a real-life Italian convict?  Aw crap, did I just wish rape on someone?  I promised my shrink I’d try to do that less this week.

[picture source: Buzzfeed]