Interesting Things About Italy

Their Hot Chocolate in Italy is wonderful. I first had some at a little cafe in San Lorenzo. It was extremely thick and tasted like warm chocolate pudding. The consistency was similar. We went to Perdonone Wednesday afternoon and went to a place that was famous for its chocolate. The window display was beautiful, and there were all sorts of items carved from chocolate.

There was a chocolate fountain near the sitting area. Raia was fascinated, and I thought it was pretty cool too. We ordered hot chocolate. It arrived in a beautiful glass cup and we both dipped our spoons into it. It was basically like eating melted chocolate. It was dark chocolate, which I don't normally like, but it was not as bitter and I loved it.



You can buy your train tickets very easily. There is automatic teller, and then there are human tellers. It is very simple and the automatic ones have a touch screen and you can pick English.
Once you get your ticket it will say where you are going on it but not any other information. So when you buy the ticket you have to make sure you look at the schedule in case you have to switch trains. Long train rides have assigned seating, short ones don't.

I didn't know this until I sat in someone else's seat on the way to Milano from Venezia. I then tried to find my own seat, but sat in the wrong car. But the men who were supposed to sit in my seat motioned to me that it was okay. They just sat next to me. It was very confusing and I couldn't really relax because I thought that someone would come to their seat and then where would they be?

You also have to make sure that you validate your ticket before you leave the station. There are some bright yellow boxes. This is to make sure that you don't reuse your ticket. The time and date and location get printed on the top of the ticket.



Also the Italians drive on the right side of the road. The correct side that is, which just happens to be the right. I was able to ride in the front seat of a car and it felt so good because it was so normal! When I ride in the front seat here in Scotland it makes me feel like I should be driving!

The Italians always eat dinner around 7:00-7:30pm. They thought it was crazy that we ate dinner as early as 5:30pm here. Raia asked me if we got hungry before bed. I thought about it and I guess sometimes we do, but not often. It was an interesting thought to me. I get hungry at 5:00pm usually, so I don't think I could wait that long. Unless of course we have a late dinner. But I don't need to rattle on about dinner times...

Toilets in Italy were unique in that they all had different ways to flush them. Sometimes there were buttons on the floor. I never did see one that looked similar to the ones we have in the U.S.