After a long day of travel, I finally got back to home soil and it feels good. As much as I have enjoyed my Italian odyssey I’m very happy to get back to normality. To come back to a city where gesticulations are only really done in anger. When I first arrived in Italy I found it rather amusing to watch all the cliche movements and gestures but after a while I found it rather irritating. It seems like life is just one big melodrama. Even when they are talking on the phone using hands free they talk as if the other person is in front of them. As I said before, “they walk with purpose and always seem to have somewhere to go and gesticulating on the move.” The Scottish are very different, we don’t really want every Tom Dick and Harry to know what we are on about.

The Italians are certainly a colourful bunch and very different from us Scottish folk.

But I was really surprised by the amount of people that smoke, I thought China was bad for smoking, but in Italy it’s worse because the women smoke more than the men. In China it’s usually only the men that smoke and so with both sexes smoking it feels worse. They also just discard the cigarette without a care, just like in China. But what is worse in Italy is the stench of cigarettes. As I said before you feel like you are walking through a huge ashtray and sometimes a really famous monument has been compromised by this plague.. It’s sometimes very difficult to walk down the street without inhaling second hand smoke. As a reformed smoker I think I’m more sensitive to it than maybe a non smoker, I hate it and this was one of the most annoying things about Italy.

Second most annoying thing, the driving. They are terrible drivers with no due care and attention for their fellow man. In the narrow streets of Naples I witnessed so many close shaves and I’m surprised I never saw bodies and cars collide. Most of the cars you see are damaged to back up this statement. But I will admit that Naples is a special case in many ways and s a little different form the other cities I visited. Venice was great because it’s mostly a car free zone.

Trying to change currency in Italy is next to daylight robbery, if you are lucky they will give around 2/3 of the actual rate on the open market. There is a city tax that must be paid only in cash, only in cash……….who is getting this little kickback I wonder.

Maybe I’m out of touch with the cost of things in the western world but the only thing that seemed cheap in Italy was the coffee.

The food is way too rich for me although very delicious but I will be returning to a more simpler diet now that I have returned home, but I am looking forward to getting back to China for some dumplings and noodles and the many other dishes I like.

I was also very surprised by the amount of African Business men that are all over Italy and they seem to do a bit more business in Naples. The black market, no pun intended has been cornered by them very well. In Naples near the main station you will see many of them just hanging around with no real purpose, but I’m sure they are keeping an eye out for someone.

But would I return to Italy, well yes I would but I would only be interested in the natural beauty that it has to offer. The Cinque Terra was a great place to visit and it was great to get out in the fresh air, but just like China you will come across a discarded cigarette even in the remotest of places. The history is amazing and along with it the architecture that has followed. But where to next? Well I’m going to stay in Scotland for a few weeks and then hopefully return to the east to see what life has to offer there.