Italy vacation

Last Saturday, we got back from our vacation to Italy. We were only there for nine days, but we went all over the country, including Rome, Vatican City, Florence, Venice, Pisa, Naples, Capri, and Pompei.

If you have any plans on visiting Italy, you'll love Italy if you can appreciate its history. Everything there is OLD, which I mean in a good way. A hour's walk in Rome can take you past 2000-year old ruins from the Roman Empire, priceless works of art from the Renaissance, and modern-era buildings. Drive a few minutes away and you can find medieval castles and old WWII fortifications. The whole country is like a living museum of Western culture from the past three millenia. It is truly amazing.

The food in Italy is really good, too. One thing that surprised me is that, as expected, they eat a lot of pasta there, but not as the main course. All of the restaurants we went to served pasta as a first course, but served some sort of meat dish (mostly chicken or veal) as the second course. One other odd thing is that, most of the time, they serve the salad AFTER the meal. I've always viewed the regular meal as the reward for having to eat the salad, not the other way around! Also, you'll love Italy if you love wine; they serve it with almost every meal (except breakfast).

I had my very first espresso in Italy. Not one of those lattes from Starbucks that mixes it with two cups of milk, but a straight shot of espresso. They serve it after almost every single meal with dessert. I didn't think I would like it since I don't really like strong coffee, but I was surprised at how smooth it was. The Italians scoff at regular coffee, which they call simply "American coffee". Our tour guide described it as "watered-down espresso", which is basically what it is.

The bad thing is that Italy is pretty expensive. Everything in Italy costs the same in Euro as the same items in the U.S. cost in dollars. The problem is that the Euro is with about 1.3 to 1.4 times the dollar. This means that you can expect a 30-40% markup on everything there, from bottled water to shoes. Not to mention that a lot of items (especially clothes) are more expensive to begin with. You also really need to be wary of the tourist gougers...many tourist shops love to take advantage of you if you're not careful.