Italy2 - till 18 May La dolce vita is a lot more apt than I ever believed. I am prepared, after just a couple of weeks in Italy, to offer a preliminary conclusion that Italians have the work-life balance sorted out pretty well. Take the opening hours of shops as an example - and please don't take this as gospel because we haven't got it straight yet - shops close between 1300 and either 1500 or 1600every day on which they are actually open. But some shops stay open during these hours. The ones that close will normally open again between, say, 1600 and 1900. But post offices don't. They close at 1300 and that seems to be it for the day. Large hypermercato (hypermarkets to those who only speak English) in most places are open
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