Here are some things about living in Florence that are new or different for us.  We'll keep adding to the list as we make new discoveries:

May 2006

• Our dentist does teeth cleanings, not a dental assistant.  He also called us a cab on his cell phone at the end of the appointment.  (And he speaks 3 languages.)

• Prices to Serie A soccer games vary depending on the opponent.  The same seats that went for 30 Euros against Ascoli (a weak opponent) went for 45 Euros against Rome (a big rival and strong opponent).

• We have eaten in 4 different Chinese restaurants in Florence and none of them offered barbecued pork on the menu.

• Birthday parties are typically organized on Saturdays, from about 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m., or Sundays from about 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.  Parents often stay for the entire party, and food and drinks are available for them.  Siblings often come along as well.

• We went to see the Fiorentina v. Roma soccer game and noticed several things that were different from our experience attending a professional sporting event in the U.S.:

  • There was no game clock or scoreboard that displayed the time/score throughout the game.  Instead, the time/score was displayed on a big jumbo-tron every 10 minutes or so.

  • No replays were shown on the jumbo-tron.

  • There was very limited team merchandise on sale inside the stadium.  You could get things like a team flag at the drink concessions.  No vendors sold only merchandise.  There were several merchandise vendors on the streets around the stadium.

  • Caps were removed from all bottled water brought into the stadium and all bottled water sold inside the stadium, apparently to reduce the chance a bottle could be used as a projectile.

  • There was no play-by-play during the game.  PA announcements were made only when there was a substitution.

  • People smoke in the stands during the game.

  • There are no luxury box seats at the Florence stadium.

  • There were no lines to speak of at the places where you could buy drinks, just a crush of people.  We had to work our way through one crowd to place our order and pay, and another to pick up the things we bought.

  • There were security fences surrounding the stadium about a block from the entrances that you needed a ticket to get through.

  • We saw only one vendor circulating in the stands during the game – a fellow selling ice cream.

  • There were numerous flares lit and firecrackers (very loud – maybe M-80’s) set off by the visiting fans.  Nobody seemed to be making any effort to stop it.

  • There were firemen and riot police in full gear standing in the end-zone area throughout the game.

  • The Roma fans were kept in the stadium after the game until all of the Florence fans had left, and then ‘escorted’ to their busses etc.  [We think this was to minimize the risk of confrontations between fans from both cities who were under the influence of too much testosterone.]

March 2006

• Sales in stores happen 2 times per year, times that are tightly regulated by the government.  After-Christmas sales start after the beginning of the new year and run for a couple of months.

• Italian pharmacists don't seem to worry too much about counting prescription pills, at least not for antibiotics.  When we recently picked up a prescription for antibiotics, with instructions from the doctor to take 2 per day for 4 days, we got a box with 30 tablets. 

• Women get a discount on tickets to Serie A soccer games, ranging from 18% to 33% in Florence depending on seat location.  Women also get a discount on taxi fares after 9 at night.

• When we stopped by the gas station in our neighborhood recently, the attendant was smoking a cigarette while handling the gas pump.  Nobody seemed to notice except us.

• Before the beginning of 2006, you didn't need a driver's license to drive a motorino under 50cc.  There are also little cars with engines smaller than 50cc, and you didn't need a license to drive one of those either.

• Animal crackers here have different animals than in the US, including wild boars, sea turtles and roosters.

• There are 4 daily newspapers that are distributed in Florence for free, mainly by people standing at busy intersections during morning rush hour and handing them to passing motorists.

December 2005

• We receive hardly any junk mail and NO catalogues in Italy.  We do get some fliers in our mailbox but they aren't delivered by the postman (or postwoman actually).  Most of them are for things like pizza deliveries, or a notice about what's on sale at the grocery store.  But we also get a few unusual ones.  For instance, many new restaurants print up fancy 4-color brochures advertising their location and menu.  We've also received a beautiful brochure advertising mural painters, available to decorate the walls of your living room, dining room, or bedroom.  The brochure displays their recent work and offers client endorsements.

• We share a single mailbox with all our neighbors in the compound.  This means that nine separate households receive mail all together and it's up to each household to look through the mailbox and take what's theirs.  Everyone is very respectful of this arrangement - although we suspect that postcards are read by all. (We are told that this type of mailbox is not common in Italy - in most multi-family dwellings, each family has their own private mail box, just as in the US.)

• There is an area in the center of Florence called the ZTL (Zona Traffico Limitato) where you cannot drive a car unless you have a permit.  It is enforced through a system of cameras at the various entry points to Centro.  They snap a picture of the license plate of each car passing through that does not have a transmitter that lets the system know that it has permission to be there.  Then they send you a ticket in the mail, and invite you to go see the picture the camera took of your car if you think there has been a mistake.  We received such a ticket, and here's the photo.

• The start times, and even dates, for 'Serie A' soccer games seem to change from time to time without anyone making a big deal out of it.  For example, the match between Florence and Rome scheduled for 3:00p.m. on November 27 was changed to an 8:30 p.m. start sometime during the week leading up to the game - not a big deal. 

• Tickets to 'Serie A' soccer games aren't sold to the general public until the week of the match.  So say you wanted to go see Florence v. Juventus on December 4^th?  You couldn't buy a ticket (unless you had season tickets) until the Monday before - November 28.

• When you buy something at a toy store (or at other shops that generally sell gift type items), the clerks always take off the price tags while they are ringing the item(s) up.  And they come right off too - they don't come apart in pieces like so many price tags in the U.S.

• During Christmas season, most stores will ask if you want items you purchase wrapped, and if you do they will do it for free.

• The day after Christmas is a national holiday in Italy - it is St. Stephen's (Santo Stefano's) day.

November 2005

• When someone has a baby here, a ribbon is hung on the family's front door -- blue for a boy, pink for a girl.  If you live in an apartment building, the ribbon is hung on the door to the street, not the door to your apartment.

• Frozen yogurt in Italy is really frozen yogurt.  It tastes like yogurt and not ice cream.  It's standard at most gelaterias and yogurterias to add toppings to your yogurt.  This is not an option for gelato.  Yogurt toppings include fresh fruit, like strawberries or shaved coconut, candy, like bits of chocolate or gummy bears, and/or syrup, like raspberry syrup or caramel.  Frozen yogurt tastes really good over here.

• Live sports coverage is on FM, not AM radio.

• All larger cities we've visited distribute one or more free daily newspapers highlighting local, national and international news and sports.  These papers are about 24 pages long and are distributed in the morning at busy intersections and bus stops.

• Newsstands display posters with the headline from the lead story for the day from all of the major papers.

• We have yet to see any Italian's with bumper stickers on their cars.  (We have seen a few bumper stickers, but we could tell the cars weren't owned by Italians.)

• We think there are fewer tattoos and body piercings here than in the US.

• Co-ed teenage sleepovers are apparently fairly common in Italy.  They are parent-chaperoned.  The kids talk, watch movies, listen to music, dance, etc.  There is very little drinking (even though they could legally buy alcohol if they wanted it), or drugs, or sex.  We have heard this both from parents and from teenagers.  (One person who told us about this was an American girl.  You can imagine her reaction when a boy classmate invited her to her first sleepover!)

• Last spring we posted a picture showing how trees get pruned back in a way we haven't seen before.  We wondered if the trees would come back right away.  They did.  Here is a picture showing how the same trees looked recently. 

• Virtually every motor scooter and motorcycle you see in Italy has a windscreen.

• A story in a local paper recently reported that 40% of Italian men (and 20% of women) aged 30 to 34 live at home with their parents.

• You can find a Catholic mass being broadcast on FM radio 24/7.

• The pre-cut curtains you can buy at places like Ikea are 118' long - because the ceilings are generally taller here.

• There are little cars here that have motors under 50cc that you can drive when you are 14.

• At the Florence soccer stadium, there is a special section reserved for visiting team fans.  It is separated from the regular seats by a high fence and has netting over the top to prevent objects from being thrown in or out.  When we went to see a game against Livorno, the seats immediately adjacent to that section were all empty , but we have read that they are going to have off-duty police use those seats in future games, both to provide a more secure buffer between home and visiting fans, and so that the extra police are available in case there are problems.  Yikes.

• The boys started at a new school this year, a private Catholic school called Sacre Cuore (Sacred Heart).  School started on a Wednesday.  The first 5 days of school ended at noon.  The next 8 days of school ended at 1pm.  Then, starting on October 1, the schedule was as follows: Monday and Thursday 8:15am to 4:00pm; Tuesday and Friday 8:15 am to 1:00pm, with optional after-school activities (tennis, violin, dance, etc.) until 4:00 pm; and Wednesday 8:15am until 1:00 pm.  The schedule of school holidays was finalized in late October.  The final day of school hasn't been decided yet; all we know so far is that it won't be later than June 10.

• In Penn's class (1^st grade), they simultaneously teach block printing and cursive writing.

• There is no fluoride in the public water system.  We give the boys fluoride pills every day.

• There is a very different approach to drinking alcohol in Italy.  It isn't entirely clear what the drinking age is.  It isn't unusual to see families dining at restaurants giving even small children a little wine, or wine diluted with water.  Kids can buy a glass of beer or wine at a bar when they are 16 or so.  It is very unusual to see people drink a lot at restaurants or bars, and incidents of public intoxication are very rare (except among foreign visitors).  For Italians, drinking just seems to be a not-very-big-deal part of life and much less of a source of problems than in the US.

• It is also much more common to see younger people smoking here - 13 or 14 years old, and at school!

August 2005

• When Florence won its last soccer game of the season, and staved off being relegated to Serie B (kind of like the Mariners having a bad year & being relegated to Triple A for the next year - a very big deal!), all the fans in the stadium got free wine before leaving the stadium.

• The Italian beach scene is very different.  There are very few open/public beaches.  Instead, there are wall-to-wall little beach clubs, typically with changing rooms, showers & a small bar and/or cafe, where you can rent space for the day.  Some people even buy a particular spot (typically with a couple of chairs, a chaise lounge & an umbrella) for the whole summer, and nobody else can use it even if those people don't show up.

• A lot more older people go to the beach in Italy.  Seeing young kids, parents and grand parents together is quite common.  And all generations wear little teeny bathing suits - speedos for men and bikinis for women - whether they're 5 years old or 85 years old.

• If there is a slow-down, or stop-and-go traffic on the autostrada, people often put on their emergency flashers so that people coming up behind get plenty of warning.  We think this is very smart.

• There is a special lane for paying tolls on the autostrada with credit cards.  They are rarely busy because credit cards apparently aren't all that common here (debit cards are very common, but not credit). 

• Cottage cheese is only available in the summer months.  We are told this is because so many Italian women diet in the summer in order to look better in their bikinis.

• Everybody uses shutters to help regulate the temperature of their house or apartment.  Everybody.

• August is such a popular vacation month (yes, month) that Florence becomes eerily quiet.  There are still a good number of tourists in the center of town, but it is very quiet and deserted elsewhere.  Many shops and restaurants are closed for the month, traffic is light, and there are parking spaces everywhere!

• It is not at all uncommon to find waiters, waitresses, store clerks and taxi drivers who speak at least one language other than their native Italian - most frequently English but sometimes Spanish or German or something else.  Speaking a foreign language is something all Italians seem to know how to do at least a little.  Compared to how many Americans know how to speak a 2^nd language, it's hard not to be impressed.

• When Italians visit the beach, whether for a day or for a month, they mostly wait until the last possible moment to leave.  This causes enormous traffic jams late Sundays throughout the summer, and on the last day of August.

May 2005

• You can get beer or wine with your order at McDonald's.  (We didn't actually go to McDonalds here, we just noticed this through the window when we were walking by.)

• At weddings, they throw rose petals, rice, silver-coated almonds and candied almonds.

• The main highways in Italy are pretty much all toll roads.

• The grocery store we go to sells eggs by the half-dozen or in boxes of 10, but not by the dozen.

• We don't think there are any vanity license plates here - at least we haven't seen any yet.

• Although people barbecue, it is pretty hard to find charcoal briquettes.  Charcoal wood pieces, called "lumpwood”, are much more common.

• Our doctor and dentist answer their own phones and make all patient appointments themselves. 

• Fresh fruit starts arriving in stores earlier in the spring here - for example, we found cherries from Sicily in the store the first week of May, a full month earlier than we remember ever finding them at home.

• There are no Starbucks anywhere in Italy. 

• Cars and small trucks that run on diesel fuel are far more common here, and every gas station offers diesel fuel as well as regular gasoline.

• Our household water comes from a well.  City water doesn't have fluoride in it.

• There is a sports newspaper here called Corriere dello Sport.  Here's how many pages it devoted to various sports on Tuesday, May 24:  calcio (soccer) - 19; Formula 1 racing - 2; basketball - 2; bicycle racing - 1; tennis - 1; baseball - 0.

• There are quite a few multi-lane roads around Florence that don't have lane stripes.  People just kind of figure it out as they drive.

• All of the buildings in Florence have tile roofs.  There are no homes with asphalt shingles or cedar shakes.

April 2005

• A taxi that has the right of way will often stop to allow another taxi to enter the traffic, or cross the intersection, when traffic is heavy.  We think there is some kind of unwritten code among taxis about this - they help each other out.

• There are no newspaper boxes on the street where you can buy a newspaper.

• At the grocery store, you can buy Quail eggs as well as chicken eggs.

• You never pass on the right on the autostrade.  Unless you are in the process of passing another car you better get back over to the right or cars coming up behind you will get right on your tail, flash their lights and beep their horns until you get out of the way.

• You can drive a motor scooter (50cc or less) when you are 14, but you have to be 18 before you can get a license to drive a car.

• We couldn't find any jellybeans in Florence around Easter.

• We haven't yet found anyplace in Italy where you can buy zip-loc bags.  We can only find the ones with twist ties.

• There are 'Financial Police' (Guarda di Finanza) in Italy whose job is to make sure businesses properly report all of their income and pay all their taxes.  They are not like IRS tax auditors - they have uniforms, police cars and guns.

• It takes a long time and a lot of paperwork for a foreigner to buy a car in Italy:

  • First you have to have a visa.  We had to get this in the US before we came to Italy

  • The visa allows you to apply for a 'permesso di sojorno', which is kind of like a visa except it is issued by the local police & establishes the legality of your being in Italy for more than a short visit.  You have to apply for this shortly after you arrive, and renew it each year (although if you stay long enough you may eventually get one that is good for more than a year, or even permanent).  After you apply, it takes 6-8 weeks to get.  

  • After you get your 'permesso', you can apply to the 'commune' (in our case, the town of Florence) for a 'certificato di residenza'.  This establishes your official place of legal residence in Italy. It takes about another 2 months for this application to be processed.  The process includes a visit to your house by the police to confirm that you live where we said you lived on the application form. 

  • Then you also need your passport for identification, or you can apply for a 'certificato d'identita', an Italian identity card.  You can apply for the latter only after you get your 'residenza', and they will issue it on the spot. 

  • Once you have all the necessary papers and have made all the necessary financial arrangements to buy a car, it takes another 2 or 3 days before you can actually drive it away, while they obtain official license plates.  There are no temporary plates here.

• They show re-runs of soccer games and basketball games on TV without the commentators.  It's just the game, & the sounds of the game.  Quite nice.

• There are lines at all of the post offices that are dedicated to the payment of utility bills - you can pay your gas, electricity and phone bills there.

March 2005

• The zippers on men's coats/jackets are reversed - the part you pull up is on the left side instead of the right.

• You see a lot of women wearing fur coats during cold weather in Italy.

• People eat on a different schedule here.  Breakfast is at the same time as at home.  Lunch is eaten at 1pm or later.  Dinner is generally eaten after 7pm, often after 8pm, especially in restaurants.

• At the supermarket we go to, there is a whole aisle (both sides) devoted to pasta, and a giant fresh cheese section where you can get, among other things, a dozen or more different kinds of fresh mozzarella.

• The baseball team Walker plays on practices all year round.  They played in a tournament in February that was played inside, in a gymnasium.

• Trees get pruned back in a way we haven't seen before. 

• Pharmacies collect batteries for recycling.  Occasionally you see a recycling collection box on the street near other trash receptacles.

• If you fly on an airplane with mostly Italians, there will be a round of applause when the plane lands.

• Since we have been in Florence (6 months), we have seen only 1 fire engine on its way to a fire.

• Sometimes in stores or taxis if the total price is not a round number, they will round it down.  For example, 10.15 Euros may get rounded down to 10 even.  They never round up.

• All streets where there is car parking are cleared once per month and cleaned.  There are signs posted indicating the schedule so you can be sure to move your car.

• When you order take-out pizza, you can have beer or wine delivered with it.  If you order enough (like 4 pizzas), the take-out place we use offers some free beer or wine.

• If a doctor writes a prescription for antibiotics, it seems you can get it refilled as much as you want/need.  There is no apparent system for keeping track of how many times such a prescription is filled.

February 2005

• The key to our house is the old-fashioned kind.

• Motorini (and bicycles) often go the wrong way on one-way streets and nobody seems to mind.

• The boxes for sending mail are red instead of blue, are on building walls instead of freestanding on sidewalks, and are divided into two sections: one for letters "Per la citta" (for the city), and one "Per tutte le altre distinazione" (for all other destinations).

• At the supermarkets, the checkers sit on chairs while they are checking you out.  Also, you are responsible for weighing your own fruit and vegetables.  You put them on an electronic scale, push a button with a picture of the fruit/vegetable on it, and a machine prints out a bar code sticker with the price to put on the plastic bag for the checker to scan.

• As you are walking around town here in Florence, you will come across little shrines to the Madonna in the middle of the wall, or at the corner of a building.  They will often have fresh flowers and/or a burning candle near them.

• Instead of buying firewood by the cord, you buy it by weight, measured in 'quintale' -- one quintale is 100 kilograms, or about 220 pounds.  We got five quintale thinking it sounded like a lot but it didn't even last a month.

• Many of the satellite dishes are terra cotta colored to make them blend in better with the old style roofs.

• All of the banks in Italy have double security doors.  You need to buzz to go through the first one, then when that one is completely closed behind you they buzz you through the second one.  It's the same process in reverse on the way out.  Also, many banks have armed guards on duty all the time.

• The plugs on the end of telephones are quite large and look kind of like a 3-pronged electric plug.

• So far all the traffic lights we have seen are on the corner of the intersection closest to where you stop for a red light, not on the far side of the intersection or hung overhead in the middle.  So if you pull too far forward into the crosswalk when you stop, or are in the middle of the intersection trying to make a left turn, you can't see what color the light is.

• It is very common for windows in apartments or offices on the ground floor of buildings to have bars on them.

• When you order pizza at a restaurant, you always get a knife and fork because the pizza never comes pre-sliced. 

• When you order salad at a restaurant, it always comes undressed.  They bring you bottles of olive oil, vinegar (red, white or balsamic) and salt & pepper, and you dress it to your liking.

• It is very common for stores, when they close, to have some kind of security door that rolls down to prevent break-ins.

January 2005

• Parking spaces are very limited in Florence, so sometimes people get very creative about the way they park.  It is not uncommon to come across double-parked cars, cars parked nose-in in a space meant for parallel parking, cars parked in an open space out in the middle of a piazza - even cars parked in crosswalks!

• Most Christmas trees are sold in pots.  Christmas tree stands are very hard to find and are very different than the kind we had at home.

• The person who delivers our mail rides a motorino.

• There are many car models here that we have never seen in the U.S.

• It is not uncommon to see Smart Cars with patterned paint jobs instead of solid colors.

• Doctors routinely make house calls.  When Penn was sick Christmas eve, we called the doctor and he appeared at our door within 90 minutes.  When he left he insisted we call him at home Christmas morning to report on Penn's progress.  His bill had his office and home addresses on it, as well as his office, home and cell phone numbers.  He also sent Alison a text message on her cell phone, on Christmas day, checking on Penn's status.

• There are places around town where you can plug in your electric car or motorino to recharge it.

• The hot chocolate you get in restaurants or bars is very thick and sweet - it almost tastes like a melted a chocolate bar.

• We haven't seen any Bibles in the nightstands of any of the hotels where we've stayed in Europe.

• We haven't seen any fire hydrants anywhere in Italy except in Sicily (Palermo).

• All the Italian cities and towns we have visited have a lot of taxis.  And they are all white.

• Shutters on windows are very common.

• It is considered a good luck symbol, for both men and women, to get and wear new red underwear for New Years.

• The live entertainment on the biggest TV sports awards show of the year (the FIFA awards for male and female international soccer players of the year) consisted entirely of opera arias.

• It is not unusual to see two men or two women walking down the street arm-in-arm, holding hands, or embracing, and nobody bats an eye.   

• All medium and larger towns in Italy have professional soccer teams.

• There are cigarette machines on the street.

• Because some of the streets are so narrow, more buildings cantilever out above the ground floor to get more space.

December 2004

• At the movie theater that sometimes shows films in English, they usually don't show any previews, and there is always a 10-minute intermission about half-way through the movie.

• They don't celebrate Thanksgiving here but there are enough Americans in Florence that it's not too hard to find all the things you need to make a traditional Thanksgiving dinner.

• There are river rats the size of (fat) cocker spaniels in the Arno River.  Some people call them "river beavers" but they don't look like beavers to us!

• A lot more business is done with cash here. Checks aren't used very much, partly because there is a stiff bank charge to process a check from another bank.  You can also end up paying a lot to wire money -- you pay some to the sending bank and some to the receiving bank.

• It is hard to find some things we take for granted at home -- like peanut butter and maple syrup.  It is impossible to find others -- like oreos and Jell-O.

• If you see a Cohiba cigar on a store shelf, you can be sure it is from Cuba, not the Dominican Republic.

• There are many places where you can buy small sandwiches (panini) to eat, but none of them come with any kind of condiments.  It's rare to find any kind of condiments available in restaurants (like mustard or mayonnaise).

• When you get water or a soft drink at a restaurant or bar, you don't get it with ice unless you specifically ask for it.

• Almost all the Italians and other non-Americans we have met like Americans, but think George W. Bush is a terrible President.

• It's not unusual to find Wild Boar ("cinghiale" -- cheen-gee-all-ay) on the menu in restaurants.  There are even restaurants that specialize in it.

• A lot of things around Florence are really, really old.  We live in a building that is 500 years old, and they started building the Duomo almost 1,000 years ago.

• At grocery stores (and some other stores), you buy the plastic bags to put your groceries in.  A lot of people bring their own cloth or mesh bags with them.

• You have to pay one or two Euros to get a shopping cart at the grocery store; when you return the cart you get your money back.

• There were still a lot of leaves on the trees in Florence in early December.  The temperature still gets into the 60's from time to time, too.

• A lot more people smoke here than at home.  However, as of January 10, 2005 you can no longer smoke in restaurants, except those with a separate non smoking area, or any public place in Italy.  Together with Norway & Ireland, Italy now has the toughest anti-smoking laws in the EU (and some Italians aren't too happy about it...).

• Although lots of people smoke cigarettes in Europe, we have yet to see anyone chewing tobacco.

• Tipping is not as common here, and when you do leave a tip it's not as big as in the US -- you might leave just a couple of Euros if you get very good service at a restaurant.  There is almost always a service charge (coperto) added to the bill, but even with it tipping isn't expected.

• Everybody's cell phone plays a little tune when they receive a call.  It might be modern or classical, but its always music.  We don't even have ring tones available on our cell phones -- just music.

• Typical bread in Tuscany has very little salt in it.  You have to ask for bread with salt at the bakery (pane con sale).  And in the specialty bread stores, bread is priced by weight.

• People drive very differently here.  The general rule seems to be whoever is in front has the right of way & the person behind you is responsible for avoiding a collision.  It's kind of chaotic at first, but it works.  Nobody gets upset if someone cuts in front of them -- they just move out of the way.

• It is very unusual to hear people beep their car horns in Florence, even in traffic jams.

• There are parts of Florence (and other cities) where you can't drive cars unless you live there.

• Santa Claus is called Babo Natale (Bah-bo Na-tal-ay).

• The boys get three full weeks off from school at Christmas instead of two.

November 2004

• A lot more people travel by train here.  The train station in Florence has been really crowded when we have been there.

• The electrical plugs are different in Italy, and there are at least 4 different kinds used.

• When people in the stands at baseball games here yell "Die!", it's good.  It really means "Let's go!"

• They celebrate Halloween in Italy, but not like in the U.S.  There are costumes, mostly of the ghoulish variety, and there are parties (with candy) at school and at various private events around the city, but there is no door-to-door trick-or-treating. 

• People walk a lot more here.  There is less driving.

• There are a lot of traffic circles, or roundabouts, where you have to figure out how to merge in to a constant stream of traffic without getting in an accident.  The basic rule is that the car entering from the right has the right-of-way.  But there are a lot of roundabouts where the cars coming in have stop or yield signs, so the cars already in the roundabout have the right-of-way.  You always need to be on your toes!

• There is a fulltime hired guard at the boy's school.

• You can find lizards a lot easier in Florence than in Seattle.

• The weather is warmer in Florence than in Seattle.  When it rains, there is a lot more lightning.

• The big grocery stores are closed on Sunday (except a few are open once per month).

• The newspapers on Sunday look just like every other day - not the big fat things with lots of advertising that come at home.

• There are no comics in the newspapers.

• All church bells in Florence ring for a few minutes every Sunday at 6 p.m. They ring other times too but all of them ring together at 6 on Sunday.

• There are kiosks selling newspapers and magazines all over the place. 

• They don't have smoke detectors in the houses here.

• If FedEx tries to deliver something and we're not home, they call us up on the telephone later that day to ask when would it be convenient to have them come back.

• A normal wash cycle takes 90 minutes and a normal dryer cycle takes 130 minutes.

• Most of the radio stations play a lot of techno-pop.

September 2004:

• There is gelato instead of ice cream.  We think gelato tastes better than ice cream.  Also, instead of the ice cream scoops they use in the US, they have little, flat paddles.  We think it's because it's easier to scrape it into a cone or a bowl but we're not sure.

• There are motor scooters (motorini) everywhere!  The bigger the motor scooter, the bolder the driver.  They pass on the left and right and weave in and out of traffic - sometimes even into oncoming traffic!  Occasionally, they'll pass our car on the left and right at the same time.  This makes for an exciting driving experience.

• Instead of garbage and recycling cans at your house, there are big dumpsters on the street that you and your neighbors share.  We take our garbage and recycling out as often as needed.  There is one dumpster for garbage, one for recycling paper, and one for recycling plastic and glass.

• The Italian alphabet only has 21 letters.  They don't use j, k, w, x or y except in foreign words or names - like Walker, which begins with a "doppia vu".

• When you go to the grocery store or the open market, you don't touch fresh vegetables or fruit with your bare hands.  At the grocery store you put on plastic gloves.  At the open market you never, ever touch the produce yourself.  You tell the seller what you want and he or she handles it for you.

• A lot of the streets are made of cobblestones, and they have really skinny sidewalks.  The street names seem to change every block or so.

• There is a lot of soccer on TV, and no baseball or football.  When a goal is scored, the announcer always says "goooooooooooooooaaaaaaaalllllll!!!!"

• Walker and Penn take a bus to school.

• Restaurants don't open for dinner until 7:30 or 8:00, and some are closed on the weekends.

• There are a lot of small, specialized shops -- like bread stores, vegetable stores, wine stores and meat stores.

• At some gas stations they have bars -- the kind where you can buy a glass of wine or get a mixed drink.

• The bacon is different.  It's pancetta really.  It's wonderful!

• The traffic lines on the roads around the city seem to be more guidelines and not mandatory - especially for people on motor scooters.

• Speeds are posted in kilometers per hour instead of miles per hour, and the signs are round instead of rectangular.

• The money is Euros instead of dollars.  Right now, 1 Euro is worth about $1.22.

• The classrooms at the school are smaller than at home.  That's mainly because the school is in such an old building, a restored 14th century villa, and they didn't have very big rooms back then.

• Walker and Penn get a hot lunch at school every day, and if they want it they can even have a cheese course!  They always have one or two pasta choices and sometimes risotto, too.