Things I'll Miss Most & Least about Italy

by Katherine

So we just got back from an amazing trip to Italy!!! Usually after a couple of weeks, it's nice to get back to your own bed and stop walking everywhere (which is basically all you do in Europe), but I think I could have stayed in Italy for a couple more weeks!! We will of course start posting about Italy once we get all our pictures uploaded and organized, but to start I wanted to give a new list of things I'll miss most and least about our trip to Europe.

Things I'll Miss the Most

1. Picking the #1 thing I'll miss most is a bit tricky, but I'd have to say the pasta is the thing I'll miss THE most! We ate pasta literally everyday - often for lunch AND dinner! Italy just does pasta so damn well!!! A sauce can be simple yet have way more flavor than most pastas over in the states.
2. Coming in a close second is the wine!! Last time I was in Italy, I made it my goal to like wine and it sure paid off. We had wine with most dinners and it's sooo cheap! You can get a bottle of wine at dinner and it costs not much more than a GLASS of wine does in the states! If you look around at surrounding tables, I'd say at least 90% of people have wine! And the house wine is always so tasty!! 
3. The coastal towns! Cinque Terre and the Amalfi Coast were mine and Brad's top picks respectively for most beautiful places we've ever visited! Though I'd still give Cinque Terre the edge, these 2 places are amazingly beautiful! The mountains, the terraced wine hills, the lemon trees, the different colors of blue in the water - all will be immensely missed!
4. The perfectly cooked octopus. Honestly, they all must go to special octopus cooking school because it all just melts in your mouth! And it's such an easy thing to overcook!
5. Travelling by train - easily and quickly. We didn't have to worry about our luggage sizes since we weren't flying Ryanair anywhere.
6. The perfectly well behaved dogs. An odd choice, but seriously, the dogs in Italy must be required to go to official training or something. Most aren't even on leashes but they don't bother anyone and don't seem to be bothered by anything. Why aren't dogs here like that??

Things I'll Miss the Least

1. My knee acting up. I've got a seriously messed up knee and it feels the worst when I do any kind of inclined or declined walking. All it took was one day to bring back the pain. I'm amazed I hiked as much as I did. But I didn't let my knee get in the way of what I wanted to do too much.
2. The smoking. So many people smoke in Italy. I mean do what you want, but it's super annoying when you're in a tunnel or in a crowded space and smoke is just being constantly blown into your face. Not cool.
3. Walking around with our suitcases. We had a layover in London on our way to Italy, so we stopped in the city to see a few key sites - with all of our luggage. We stopped in Pisa to see the Leaning Tower on our way to Cinque Terre - with all of our luggage (also we added another suitcase in Florence to fill with stuff to bring home). And we strolled through Milan before our flight out - with all of our luggage. Pain in our asses!

Not much else I'm glad to leave. I'm used to not paying by credit card at this point and we drank wine primarily at meals so we didn't spend much on water. Actually in Cinque Terre, there are a ton of water fountains everywhere! So basically what I'm saying is 'When do we go back?!?!'