the artificial construct: Postscript on Italy

Dates: 31 March 2010 to 10 April 2010
Locales: Rome, Florence, Cinque Terre, Venice, Milan (unscheduled stop)

1. Like France, payment on Italian public transport systems, especially buses, relies on the integrity of passengers. You board the bus from any the front or rear and scan your card in front of the machines installed on the bus. The driver doesn't check. Guess which end we boarded on all the time.

2. Italy must be one of the top ten tourist destinations in the world, and probably higher on a per capita basis. Seriously, Rome, Florence, Pisa and Venice were swarmed with tourists.

3. For such a popular tourist destination, Italy's citizens are unexpectedly not as bilingual as I'd expected them to be, especially in comparison to locals in other top tourist sights like Paris and Barcelona. Of course it's up to foreigners to adapt to the local vernacular always, but it's just surprising for these tourist traps. *shrugs*

4. Where ever there is money to be made, the Chinese will be there. Similar to what I observed in Spain, the Chinese diaspora extends to Italy as well, with many Italian restaurants/bars in Venice actually run by Chinese immigrants. So it's not that they're there opening Chinese restaurants, it's that they're there opening restaurants that sell Spanish/Italian food. It's pretty cool to see the Chinese boss lady mingling and hanging with the locals at the bar, speaking in Italian.

5. The St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican is the granddaddy of churches surely. Talk about OTT fabulosity. Stunning.

6. Speaking of stunning, Michelangelo's David definitely fits the description. It's much bigger than you'd expect, and is pretty awe-inspiring.

7. Something slightly negative now: Not to be sweeping and all, but our impression of the Romans was not really the most positive: There was the snobby waiter who told us snootily that the restaurant was fully booked when it was empty (maybe it was true, but it really looked unlikely. There was the impatient waitress who chided us just because some of us took a bit more time to decide our orders. And the winner: The Roman police. So when Melissa went to the police station to lodge a report for her lost passport, a policeman came out from a room, told her to wait 10 minutes, then went back in. Something important he needed to attend to first? Yeah, the football game which had another 10 min to run! Football's life and death, I suppose.

8. Italian food joints are apparently divided into 3 price/class tiers - the top is the ristaurante, the middle is the trattoria and the casual one is the osteria (which I initially thought was a place which sold oysters mainly - not a bad deduction I contend, given you have pizzerias, spaghetterias, gelaterias and even burgerias.).

9. Posted it on FB, but proud to announce that I had at least one gelato cone a day for 11 days. Mostly two scoops each time, but 3 a few times when I felt extra hungry. If you happen to visit Rome, go to this gelateria called Old Bridge, which you'll pass on your way to the Vatican Museum. Cheap, good, voluminous scoops, and friendly staff who can speak conversational Mandarin.

10. It wasn't just all ancient ruins and museums and churches in our itinerary. We spent 3 days in Cinque Terre, a UNESCO heritage site of gorgeous hilly cliffs, which we spent a large part of a day hiking across. Combine that with the number of stairs we climbed scaling towers in Pisa and Florence, and I swear I do more exercise during vacation then I do during term time.

11. Did the usual McD's in a foreign country visit. Nothing too exotic though, except a McItaly. Hamburgers are 50 cents apiece in Milan though.

12. People must think the group I traveled with was a bunch of gambling obsessed Asians. We were playing bridge any and everywhere that we were stationary for more than 10 seconds. Like waiting in line to board a plane. Asses plopped on carry-on suitcases, out come the cards. Still pretty bad at the whole card-counting malarkey though.

13. Venice is truly a unique sight to behold. No cars, and most of the buildings have been around for centuries, so what you'll see is essentially what people in the 1500s saw.

14. Unfortunately, my food experiences in Italy were a bit of a letdown. Perhaps it's because I'd set expectations too high, but none of the pastas/pizzas I had were of the host-of-a-food-programme-gushing-orgasmically-kind. It's probably also because we ate at cheap joints most of the time of budgetary reasons, but still, people do wax lyrical over plain ol' spaghetti bolognese. Perhaps good, cheap pasta is found only in Bologna (where we sadly only stopped at to change trains).

15. I have to give a shout out to Hilary (that's her anglicised name. It's Hilaria or something like that in Italian), our amazing guide to our Doge's Palace visit. Great narration of the story of Casanova's escape from the Venetian prison. At certain points, the tour group was like a bunch of kids sitting in a library listening spell-bounded to her spinning her tales. Tour guides should all be like her!

16. Those Emporio Armani ads featuring Megan Fox and Cristiano Ronaldo could be found everywhere. Makes sense what with the country being the home of Armani.

17. The original plan was to head back to London from Venice. However, upon getting to the airport, we learn that our flight had been canceled because of an airport staff strike (they had the cheek to be marching for support there! Grr.). Ervin paid 400 Euros to get a BA flight the same day because he had another flight to catch in London the next day, whilst the rest of us stayed another night in Venice, hauled ass to Milan the next day to catch a flight back from there. Only got to see the Milanese train station, and that was it.

18. 'Ciao' is used a lot indeed for greetings. Besides a plain 'ciao!', you can often go 'ciao ciao!" in quick succession. For additional emphasis, I suppose.