- The trains are wonderful. Clean, efficient, fast, and ticket-buying is super-easy.
- Bread is served at most restaurants, but you have to ask for butter.
- You don’t need an abundance of clothes. For our next trip I’ll take two pairs of pants, 3 shirts, and some scarves that will all coordinate.
- It is possible to find laundromats to wash clothes.
- Driving is not the fearsome feat we envisioned. Road signs are fairly easy to interpret and if you do your homework ahead of time, you’ll be fine.
- Airports are huge and require a lot of walking to make connections.
- Sometimes airplanes are late, which make it hard to make connections on time (see # 6)
- The walking in hill towns in Italy is mostly uphill. Hill towns=uphill.
- Even if a gate agent at the train station tells you you don’t need to validate your ticket, don’t take his word for it. Or you’ll be answering to the man on the train with the hat (the conductor).
- Many of the showers are VERY small. Be prepared.
- Iced tea will be bottled tea with flavoring. Water is available either bubbly (like sparkling water) or flat (like tap water) and both come served in beautiful bottles and are priced accordingly. (Usually 1,6 € if I remember correctly).
- Make sure you have a working cell phone with internet, or buy a phone there. Our only glitch came from not being able to make a call when we needed to.
The Italian people are friendly and accommodating.
Italy is as beautiful as everything the guide books and friends say it is, and more. History surrounds you on every corner.
We wish we had not waited so long to see this beautiful gem of the Mediterranean.
We celebrated our 50th anniversary there this year, and thought it would be our only trip. But we’re planning to go again in 2019 and every year we can until we aren’t able to go anymore.