You know you are in Italy if...

1. ...everything is little.

The cars are little. There are tons of Smart cars everywhere. Many people just ride scooters.

The showers are little. If I was 9 months pregnant during this trip, I would not have fit in the showers. This one was maybe 4 square feet big.

But, even though their bathrooms are little, they still had room for a bidet in every hotel bathroom. They loved their bidets.

The other thing that was little in Italy was the clothing. Girls wore very little clothing (which seems to be the growing trend in fashion in America as well.) and the boys wore capri pants. In every church that you go into you had to have your knees and your shoulders covered. So, they passed out paper shawls and wraps to many girls.

2. ...the Asian people carry umbrellas to protect themselves from the sun. This wasn't a bad idea actually. It was very hot in Italy. Can you guess where this tour group was from?

3. ...there is an extravigant Catholic church or basillica on every street.

4. ...there is fresh water flowing in the streets. The ancient aquaducts, which we mainly saw in Rome, have the most refreshing water. And it is the only free water in Italy. You have to buy bottled water in every restaurant if you want water to drink. Which is weird since they have all this flowing water everywhere. We found this fresh water all over Italy.

5. ...there is no personal space. I was reading the Noll's NYC blog the other day about the guy drawing a personal space bubble around himself. Well, good luck trying to do this in Italy. The restaurant tables are about 6 inches apart from each other. And the metro is amazing during rush hour. We got split up from Andrew's parents on our way to the Vatican because we thought there was no more room to get on. But, we were wrong. What looked like space for maybe 1 small person, they can cram in about 15 more people. It was amazing. Even the way they build their houses leaves little room for privacy.

6. ...pepperoni really means bell peppers. We didn't find this out until half way through the trip. We couldn't find pepperoni pizza anywhere. Then we discovered that salami picante is our pepperoni. So, don't make the mistake of ordering a pepperoni pizza because you will get a veggie pizza.

7. ...you don't really have to pay for public transportation. We began noticing this in Rome when we bought train tickets and then nobody checked them. We could have just walked on the train. You have to pay for the metro and the taxis. But, buses and trains were never checked.

8. ...there are naked statues and paintings everywhere. I am not sure why they didn't put clothes on their statues or paintings. But, we did find out that someone complained about all the naked people in Michelangelo's Sistine chapel. So, he had to go back and paint clothes on them. The man that complained was painted in hell and he had a snake biting him to cover his private area because he made Michelangeo mad. Just a bit a fun trivia for ya.

9. ...there are Ethiopians selling Prada bags out of white sheets. There were tons of venders everywhere. But, these people apparently did not have permits to sell their products. It was kind of like watching a game of cat and mouse. As the police would drive by, they would pick up their white sheets and run away and then set up their stuff in a new location. Then the police would find them there and they would run to a new location. They did this all over every city that we went to.


10. ...There are beautiful flowers in every window sill. Even in housing that looked low-income, they had flowers. It made the cities very beautiful.

11. ...there is a gelateria on every street. Maybe 2. They love their Gelato (ice cream) and so did we. And apparently it is healthier than regular ice cream because they use milk instead of cream. (I learned this on the Today Show this past week.) So, I think it is ok that we ate it every night.

12. ...people pretend to be statues. People tried to get money doing all kinds of things. One way was to stand still like a statue. We saw one kid just burst into tears and run away when he saw the statue start to move a little. It was kind of funny.

13. ...there are musical groups everywhere. Another way for people to make money. One night in Florence we heard 3 different accordian players playing "Somewhere over the Rainbow." They weren't shy about asking for money either. After their song, they would just stand there with their hand open waiting for money. Like we had asked them to play us a song! In Ferrarra, there was a little girl that played all of 4 notes on a plastic recorder thingy and then stopped for us to give her money. Some of the better groups were out playing just to promote their CDs. They were fun to listen to. In Venice, there were even boats filled with musicians that just played while they went down the Grand Canal. That was fun.