My husband and I lived in Italy, in the very rural Puglia region, for three years in the 90's. I had my baby girl in an Italian hospital. What an experience! Even young and poor, we LOVED living in Italy, and exploring, as much as we could. We learned to appreciate and love Italian red wine while living in Italy. We rode our bikes to the coast and practiced our Italian with a worker at the local trattoria who wanted to practice his English. We were gone most weekends, on some new (or favorite) excursion. We took a lot of tours, too.
Some very obscure snippets of memories just now came back to me. Nutella, parmalat, and "squiz" mayonnaise in a tube. Woh. The beautiful cobble stone roads and white-washed homes of the coastal town of Ostuni, the trulli houses and wonderful liqueurs of Alberobello, the pottery of Francovilla, the international trade fair in Bari, the beautiful chicken pitchers and other ceramics of Grottaglia, cobbled stone roads in wonderful old towns, outdoor cafes at night (just like in the movies!), beautiful Sorrento inlaid wood art, the old man who found us peering through an iron gate into a very beautiful and very old little secret place of worship nestled into a rocky hill (in a city whose name I cannot recall now), and kindly opened the gate for us, and showed us around, explaining to the best of our language abilities what we were looking at, and afterwards showing us his wonderful handmade bird water whistles (we bought two of course)....Wow...lots of great memories.
Along with traveling as much as we could, trying out local wines and regional dishes, and seeing all the popular sights, we also loved to go off the beaten path and explore on our own. We loved meeting and talking to the locals of whichever town or area we were exploring. We found and explored a wonderful excavation site in Lecce called Rocca Vecchia (sp?) in it's early stages of excavation. I can't wait to see what they've found and learned since then! We explored many keeps and forts and caves just found while driving around in the country. We were shown a small ancient hidden cave in a farmer's field and in sides of hills where christians worshiped secretly. There was still a vague and faded painting of either the Madonna and baby Jesus, and/or the local saint on the wall. I don't remember the exact details, anymore. (We saw a lot of caves and paintings while living in Italy.) We visited ancient crypts beneath gorgeous cathedrals. And nearly always during our travels indulged in one of our many coastal picnics of local wine, breads, olives, and cheeses.
Living in the Puglia region, we didn't get to see much of central or northern Italy. We were younger and poorer then, so the one time we made it to Rome just about everything but the Vatican was closed. But even then, half the famous Cistine Chapel painting was covered in tarp for maintenance. The Academie d'Art (I'm sure I have the name wrong, but one of the well known museums) was closed for repairs because of a recent bombing. We went to Venice once, but were too poor to ride on the gondola. The water taxi was interesting, but it is no gondola with a singing gondolieri. We saw carnevale, not in Venice, but in some obscure town. It was cool, but still not THE Venice Carnevale. We bought some Murano glass, but couldn't afford one of the lovely leather masks.
This time we'll get to remedy/see/do all the things we didn't get to last time. Living in Napoli this time, we'll get to learn all about the Campagnia region.
Those of you who have not been to Italy even once yet, you are going to love it! You must definitely go. There is just so much to see, taste, experience! Please plan to spend a minimum of two weeks, but three or more is even better if you can swing it. It is soooo worth it!
We visited all the traditional tourist spots; the Trevi Fountain, Vatican City, the Spanish Steps, the Coliseum, and all that jazz, and ate in lots of wonderful restaurants.
If so, they are terrific! So entertaining yet useful. I have never found learning a language so much fun.
