I can officially confirm that purple is the colour for this winter season. From Rome, to Florence, through Tuscany all the way to Venice, purple dominated the shop fronts. Whether as an accessory or a feature item, purple is a must. That and cigarettes.

Italy is a country that has yet to hear of the ‘smoking kills’ message in any shape or form. It was common to see store owners / workers lighting up in their doorways, puffing away and having a chat with someone else doing the exact same thing from a store or two away. Many evenings we’d return to wherever we happened to be staying smelling like a nightclub from our youth (though our hearing was not damaged as a result of this exercise).

My Italy highlights:

• Rome – the history, size and age of things was amazing. That and the art. My previous knowledge of Michelangelo and Raphael were as characters in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (the original – I didn’t spend all my time at nightclubs!). I now know that these two characters should have been named the other way around based on their ‘real’ life personalities. I’ve seen about 430 of Rome’s +900 churches. I’ve learnt more about Catholicism than I thought possible and have an appreciation for the wealth of The Vatican though it would be nice if some of that were shared. As an interesting side point, apparently Mercedes, Audi and BMW are bidding to design the next Pope-mobile which is a Mercedes at the moment.
• Florence – my favourite city of the trip. We’ve climbed steeples, seen more art and absorbed the way of life. I can see why there were / are so many creative people here. It’s a walled city so very pedestrian friendly and at every turn there is something different. Great food and great vibe. We stayed at two different places. One was run by a Welsh woman who thinks she’s Italian, eccentric springs to mind. We even had a curfew of 11pm!Her place was stuffed with 16th century art including statues and had the appearance of a gallery.
• Siena – another walled city which we drove to from Florence and used as a base for exploring other parts of Tuscany. I don’t think very highly of Siena but that is partially to do with our accommodation falling through and lack of information given by the people involved. This place is probably as big as Newcastle and we’d been expecting it to be about half the size of Florence.
• Tuscany in general – loved the area. Going towards the end of autumn, leaves were their various shades of yellows, reds, oranges and browns and were great to stomp through. The air was fresh and the wine… mmmmmm
• Lucca – this is a small walled city in Tuscany where we stayed for a couple of nights. Fantastic. So peaceful, pedestrian friendly and another good base point. After seeing so much art on our trip, we bought a painting. Interestingly it was modern art so perhaps this was a fit of rebellion.
• Venice – it was quite cold by the time we arrived. This city we were most disappointed with possibly because we had such high expectations. It was amazing seeing all the old places built on little islands connected to each other by bridges but by our 23rd glass or mask store, we’d had enough. We were ripped off on our first night’s dinner, paying both a service and cover charge so it put a bit of a dampener on the experience. We did see an eight piece band play Vivaldi’s Four Seasons in an old church which was pretty good. St Mark’s Square saw an acque alte (high tide) flood the area so everyone walked on elevated platforms to get to the other side of the Square. It looked like we were all parading for a fashion show though interestingly, not a lot of purple to be seen.
• Pasta – fresh is best. As one of our main food groups, this featured in most of our lunch / evening meals and I’m still not sick of it. Pizza on the other hand…
• Coffee – I’m gradually starting to withdraw now. We started most mornings at a stand up coffee bar and popped in throughout the day, sometimes also buying panini or biscotti. Italy, where one caffe macchiato is never enough.
• Wine – at the one tasting we went to, I choked on the first sip! Not a reflection of the wine but rather my general lack of coordination trying to drink and breathe simultaneously. We bought a few bottles from here.
• Gelati – I had my fair share and Mr Shallot is addicted to Fruity de la Bosco.
• Driving – I was the navigator and that was tricky enough.
• Italian drivers – see above. They have a tendency to veer onto the other side of the road just in front of where our car happens to be so there’s the effect of scaring us half to death and them seeming to expect it will all be fine. Thankfully they were right.

We’ve had Monday off work to recover from our flight home and will be back in the office tomorrow. I’ll be back to the HK coffee so it’s probably just as well that I’ve started the withdrawal process already.

* Thanks to Prince for the title to this post.