Ten Things I Miss In Italy

Mike, most of those (except for children on scooters) also fit our memories of Poland "back in the day." We're thinking about revisiting Poland next year after an absence of about 35 or 36 years, and we're steeling ourselves for the differences.

Most of your comments also apply to rural Greece, Portugal, Spain etc.

And the old Yugoslavia. You had to go to the post office to make an overseas call to America. Sometimes you had to wait hours for a call to go through. Don’t forget no one speaking English.

I've only been traveling abroad for ten years. My memories will not come close to these, but I have fallen in love with Italy over multiple visits in that time. Five things that I miss, in no specific order --

1 - The food. The really good food. The food that I can't reproduce here b/c I don't have the local produce with which to reproduce it.
2 - The wine. Even the cheapest carafe of house wine in Italy tastes better than more expensive bottles consumed here.
3 - The feeling of walking around Rome. Am I clutching my purse too tightly? Are those people staring at me & know that I am an American?
4 - Handing over my ticket on the train and silently screaming 'yes' b/c I successfully validated my ticket before boarding.
5 - Eating outside. I love eating outside, and it's rarely available where I live in the States.

See, this is the kind of thread that brings a smile to one’s face. Thank you Mike and all!

1. Rule-bending by officials. Maybe our favorite example is when we somehow got stuck on the highway in Liguria heading straight into France with no exits. We asked the toll-booth guy for information about the next exit and he cheerfully explained that it would be totally illegal and quite dangerous to make a U-turn, but to go ahead a do it.

2. Finding exactly the kind of place we like to eat.

3. Gelato. So not like ice cream.

4. Medieval streets, buildings, and town walls. Not to be found in the U.S.!

5. Chatting to the owners of dogs the same Italian breed as ours --- we accost them all and share photos and stories. It’s always agreed that our dogs are smarter than we are.

6. Having so many museums, churches, castles, pretty much all to ourselves because it’s November.

7. The pride of people in their own towns, their own local bread and sweets and wine and food. We have learned to whisper only to each other if we want to comment on, for instance, a cookie being “like” a cookie we ate in a town two miles away.

8. The “We’re here!” thrill of walking into the airport in Milan or Rome or Florence after a whole year of planning and then the long, long flight.

9. The surprise that never fades when we turn a corner or look to the end of a street and see some famous ancient Roman or medieval or Renaissance building “just sitting there.” Like it’s the most normal thing in the world.

10. One euro espresso any time of the day or night.

aquamarinesteph The taste of the food is a mystery, and not just in restaurants. We'll cook an ordinary chicken in Italy and the flavor is remarkable, yet the same technique is blah in the States, even with a premium product. The same goes for many other food products. There are a few that are better in the States - shrimp, lobster, frozen pizza - but not many. The price of produce is another story as Italian vegetables are such a bargain.

nancys8 The pride can be quite honest as well. When we inquired at a good restaurant in Pisa about local Pisan dishes, the cook said there were none - 'everything was stolen from Lucca' - just 12 miles away.

1. An afternoon spent sitting in a piazza people watching, all while sipping a spritz and snacking on chips.

2. The ubiquitous “buon giorno” or “sera”

3. Autogrill!!

4. The suggestion of a stop sign, optional lane lines, and chaos at a roundabout.

5. The simplicity, yet deliciousness of the pasta. (I rarely order pasta in the states)

6. The smell of the Tuscan countryside.

7. The passegiata.

8. Two hour lunches.

9. Exploring the regional food and wine specialties and why they work so well together.

10. The people. 😊😊😊

1. dolce fa niente - I'm trying to do this at home with minimal success.

2. riposo - it's not really just a nap, is it?

3. sunsets from the cliffs of Sorrento - truly Apollo and his fiery chariot

4. Garibaldi - gotta have the red oranges from Southern Italy though

5. Bread, but only from the South

6. Someone bringing me a cappuccino first thing in the morning . . . repeat, repeat

7. The "good" gondolier singer that sometimes comes under my hotel window in Venice (as opposed to the others) (sorry, I'm an opera singer)

8. "Welcome home!" - my favorite greeting at my favorite hotels in Sorrento, Assisi, Venice. And they make me feel at home, like family.

9. REAL Italian food! It can't just be the ingredients. It's gotta be who is in the kitchen, how loud and fun the other guests are, the late dinner hour, the dreamy stroll back home (see #8) afterwards.

10. The tug on my heart strings as I exit Statione Santa Lucia in Venice and see the Grand Canal - after 15 years I still get the same emotional thrill.

11. OK, what I don't miss: having to be carried onto the airplane at the end of my trip, kicking and crying.

@Mike - Twenty years ago, when we first started traveling to Italy, my husband suffered daily indigestion at home. For the weeks we were in Italy, no indigestion. Eventually, he made some changes in his diet which pretty much solved the problem, but it's still better in Italy!

1. Rome
2. Florence
3. Venice
4. Rome
5. Rome
6. Rome
7. Rome
8. Caravaggio in situ in Rome
9. Bernini in Rome
10. Rome

1. The feeling I get every time I round a corner and see the Duomo in Florence.

2. That same feeling every time I see David.

3. Sitting on the patio of my Air BNB in any Italian town drinking chianti.

4. Chatting with the bookstore owner in Venice.

5. Shopping for leather at the School of Leather in Florence.

6. Visiting the beautiful villages along the coast.

7. Strolling around the arena in Verona.

8. Watching my daughter learn to appreciate art and history in Rome.

9. A boat ride on Lake Como.

10. Trying to speak Italian to Italians and watching them smile.

All of this you can still find easily in Italy, Tuscany, just 30-40 min drive from Florence. You can check all your lists.

In no particular order:

1) Granita at the Bam Bar in Taormina

2) The pizza at Restaurant Charlie in Orvieto.

3) Sitting outside Al Bouech in Orta San Guilio with a plate of sliced meats and cheeses and a local bottle of wine.

4) The color of the sea in Gallipoli.

5) The wine in Barolo. (Just pick any winery.)

6) The pizza crust from Pizzeria La Picia in Levanto. (It's won awards.)

7) The empty streets at night once the day trippers leave--Venice, Orvieto, among others.

8) The scenery just about anywhere but extra emphasis on the Dolomites

9) The view from a lake front room on Lake Como.

10) The Autogrill

The church bells.
Times ten.
I just love them., and am always so happy when a place that we stay has them within hearing distance.

All of the above. Except the Autogrill. Once was enough.

1. Bernini's Apollo and Daphne
2. A full moon over San Marco Square after everyone had gone
3. Our first early morning visit to Orvieto
4. The view from the Campanile in Venice
5. Walking anywhere in Rome
6. Sitting on our balcony in Capri
7. The ceilings of the Basilica of St Francis, Upper Church, Assisi
8. The house wine, anywhere
9. Zia Sophia's sausage at the agriturismo near Montepulciano
10. The gardens of Isola Bella in Lake Maggiore

I mostly miss talking to my Italian friends...I hope they are doing OK. My friends in Sorrento seem to be doing fine.

May I do 10 more?

1. Outdoor or covered markets selling flowers or food. There’s no need for the products to be set out so beautifully, but they are.

2. The odd things we see in late medieval/early Renaissance frescoes in out-of-the-way churches. Sheep that look like aardvarks, saints holding or symbolically showing their own means of martyrdom, newborn babies the size of 3-year-olds.

3. The way little boys, teenage boys, and old men will gather around to admire our grandbaby.

4. The feeling of victory when we get on the correct bus, introduce the ticket to the machine correctly, and get off at the correct stop.

5. A truck-stop sandwich that is better than most of the sandwiches we’ve had anywhere in the States, and certainly better than the fast food available at an American highway rest stop.

6. Just listening to the everyday beauty of Italians speaking their language. Also, Italians being so complimentary about one’s Italian even when you know it could be a lot better.

7. The beauty and creativity of shop windows (and we don’t normally don’t even like to shop).

8. The artisanry of so much of what you see in the old parts of town, from the pavements to doorknobs to window fastenings.

9. Street art, including even scary-looking graffiti that turns out to say “Make tea, not war! ”

10. Food that I would not have thought was edible, let alone delicious, like deep-fried wild hyacinth bulbs or cooked wild poppy leaves.

Nancys8: yes, yes, yes. I'm aching inside right now. We never thought we would love Italy so much, but the first time we visited we knew it would be special to us.

Castelluccio. Spare a thought for its now-evacuated former inhabitants, all 300 of them. First they suffered that pair of earthquakes a few short years ago and now, wherever they've been living as domestic exiles, they've had to contend with the plague. Imagine being born and bred in such a rarefied place (idyllic Castelluccio is bang in the middle of Sibillini Park, a picturesque mountain paradise like few others) before having to leave, probably forever, then undergoing the Double Whammy of the virus.

Note that the thermal inversions which often enveloped Castelluccio in white, milky mist on certain mornings, were one of Europe's peak travel experiences. A world-class photo-op for early risers.
Finally, a nod to Castellucio's larger neighbour, the town Norcia. It too suffered significant damage during the same quakes. I gather that it has re-opened this past year, despite lying directly atop the fault line. Jayzus, who could now stand to live there?
I am done. The end.
Elena! Damme un bacio.

https://www.fodors.com/community/europe/castelluccio-2020-winter-time-lapse-imagery-1679846/

I am done. The end.

1. The scent of April spring flowers and the view from the Spanish Steps on our first time in Rome

2. The stunning sea view from our hotel balcony in Monterosso al Mare in the Cinque Terre

3. Lighting a candle of remembrance in the Duomo in Florence

4. Enjoying hot chocolate and gelato in St. Mark's Square in Venice

5. The Vivaldi Four Seasons concert at Chiesa della Pieta in Venice

6. Watching the start of the Volgalonga rowing event in Venice with the gun salute and singing of a hymn as the rowing teams rowed from the Grand Canal to Burano and back

7. Seeing the Lord's Supper painting in Milan and feeling chills to learn that during a World War II bombing of the cloister the
   painting was spared on the only wall left standing in that section of the church

8. The boat ride from Positano to Amalfi

9. The sunset on the Bay of Naples in Sorrento and seeing Mt. Vesuvius and the jeweled lights of Naples in the distance

10. The perfumed walk on the island of Capri to the Gardens of Augustus

organizer8, look up Robert Edsel's books, especially Rescuing DaVinci, to get the background on how the painting was saved.

Ohhhhhhh..... I love this post! I do not have anything "new" to add but just want to leave a note of thanks for rekindling some memories!!!!

Having lived there my list is a bit different than most.

1. The people
2. Mercato Trionfale in Rome where everything was fresh and local and tastes better than anything I buy in the US, even organic, food magic, Mike!
3. Not being able to buy anything out of season (also annoying in some ways)
4. The way they fill a prescription at a pharmacy: pre-packaged, no need to print your name on the packages, and on-request without the Rx once they get to know you
5. Access to doctors without intermediaries
6. Caffe e cornetto on every street
7. Being able to travel almost anywhere efficiently on a train, in fact car-free living we did for almost 5 years and countless trips
8. Waiters and shop owners who recognize you as a local, a regular, after only 2 or 3 visits
9. The Dolomites
10. Access to the rest of Europe from our base camp

I can also list a number of things that drove me crazy, but I really miss it more each day, especially right now.

The sounds of church bells and Vespas.

Umbria Jazz Fest.
The people
coastal towns
Ruins
Trenitalia
Circumvesuviana

Oh my gosh...you just lifted up my heart reading all about the things you miss -- and I do, too! One day, I hope not too far away, we'll be back. Thank you for sharing.

The seafood. Oh my dear...

Gabriel, you just brought back a memory...

Many years ago, (2005?) my sister and her business partner rented a villa in Positano for a month. They invited various friends and family to come visit for a week or so at a time. My husband and I were fortunate enough to be invited.

The villa rental (actually, it was a torre right on the water, a short walk up the coast from town) included a part time cook, Angela. She would meet the fishing boats as they came in early in the morning, selecting what she wanted, probably still wiggling. With her treasures she would prepare lunch for whoever was staying at the torre.

I don't remember much of what she prepared for us, but I do remember our favorite. She called it "seafood salad," and that's what it was. Mixed seafood, probably mostly squid and octopus, with a simple olive oil dressing. Nothing else. Just wonderful. And impossible to recreate.