Our own piece of real estate in Italy

We have rented an appartment instead of staying in a hotel. My opinion - it was the best decision ever. We are literally living amongst the Italians. They live very much on top of each other. I've never been to the UK, but I'm guessing it is very similar. Each "apartment block" is against the next, with no indication of where one building ends and the next starts, other than the architectural design. The apartment is small, but still comfortable. The lift are of those where you have to operand close the doors manually, else the lift won't work. In the evenings we go to bed listening to the non-stop babbling of an Italian lady, and wake up to tin the morning.

The women here are truly beautiful, and I'm feeling like an ugly duckling with my short boyish hair that is curling twice as much because of the humidity. In my research before we got here, I read that the women have a confidence here like non-other, which makes them that much more attractive. It is definitely true, however it can easily be mistaken with what we call in SA attitude. Makes me wonder if an attitude is all bad?

To drive a motorbike in SA takes guts, to drive one here takes balls of Titanium! The Italians drive extremely aggressive, and there are a lot more scooters here than SA. Car to scooter/motorbike ratio I would guess about 1 to 3. And we have seen a couple of them almost being taken out. Then again, we have also seen a couple of people talking on the phone while driving their scooters, and even one smoking!

There is a definite problem with parking. Most cars are small and they literally park bumper to bumper. Some are even touching bumpers, and most cars' bumpers are scratched and dented. The cars are parked everywhere. If you've ever been to Melville, Italy parking is the same except it looks like that everywhere, all the time!

Highlights for me in this part of our trip is when we went into something similar to a delicatessen where one of the guys at the counter cut a piece of Parma for us to taste (wow) and then asked Leon to take a picture of them while cutting us some Parma and cheese. Second highlight was having it for breakfast with croissants!