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Published: November 28th 2008
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Who haven't read something about Italy or seen something from Italy or tasted something from Italy??? Very few people in the world can say they never have done one of the three things. So do you still wonder why I got a fascination and a urge for visiting this country.
The summer of 2007 we headed for Rimini a small city at the east coast of Italy. It lays in the county of Emilia Romagna the land of the Ferrari and the Jet setter city of Italy. Not fare from Croatia, Venice, Bologna, San Marino and so on.
On must do thing when you travel on vacation is bathing in the sea. Since I am not spoiled with sea water that got a reasonable temperature and with the combination of nice beaches. The beach in Rimini was long, white and clean. The water warm and often with big waves. And if you got trouble there was a lifeguard posted every 500 meter. One of the most genius thing with the beaches in Italy is that you could pay a weeks rent for a sunbed. Then you did not have to stress up every morning for getting a good spot
at the beach. For when you had payed and chose which one you wanted this would be your spot rest of the week.
Another must do thing visiting another place is to taste some of the local cousin and try to eat like the locals. Especially when you visit a country who have influenced so many other countries with their cousin. In Italy you got four dishes at dinner and they are called Antipasti is appetizers like could meat, Primi is the first dinner dish and could be pasta or risotto, Secondi is the main dish as something with meat or fish and Dolce is something sweet after like ice cream or cake. I tried this way of eating once and never again. This because I had big trouble finishing two of the course and then struggle with two more.... It became once in a lifetime experience. One thing you got to remember when ordering food in Italy is that when you order a steak you'll only get the steak. You got to order side dishes like potato, vegetables and sauce if you like that with your steak.
When you visit Italy you just have to eat pasta,
pizza and gelato. Italian ice cream who I thinks is the worlds Rolls Royce in ice cream. We went to the old city center in Rimini and sat down at the Gellateria Porto. my travel companion bought limone and I bought banana. In the limone we got the prove of home made because we found lemon stones in it.
Every weekend they had a marked in the old city of Rimini. We thought it was just a small marked, but after walking 30 minuttes and we still could not see the end of i we figured this was a very big marked. We ended up walking around for 2 hours continuously.
When visiting Rimini they arranged Notte Rossa, the night of pink. You could get a price for each pink clothing you got on, they had a old car parade and big fire works.
When visiting Rimini you got a unique change to explore more of Italy because of the short distance to the other places and the good and cheap collective transportation.
We went twice to San Marino one of the worlds smallest states in the world. But it's a mighty sight driving up to
Piazza Firenze
The Piazza outside St. Francis churc the land who lays on the top of the mount Titan. The people who lived there got a lot of money and it's cheap to visit and shop there because it's a taxfree sone. It's a rumor that girls/ladies under 50 it's not allowed to work in San Marino because the locals are afraid the girls only marry for money. From Rimini to San Marino it's 40 minutes even though the locals tells you it takes 20 minutes. But this is without traffic. If you take a local buss, bring along Mp3 players if you do not think local loud people is charming. My experience is that 30 Italian on a 40 minutes bus ride talking very loud is tiring.
In San Marino the first thing we saw was a traffic officer wearing gold Armani sunglasses and Armani watch. One of the main reasons the Italian travel to San Marino is to shop. It's almost like Norwegian traveling to Sweden for shopping cheaper wine and liquor. One of the older men who came with the same bus as me bought so much that we had to help him carry everything back to the bus. We bought 4 pair of
designer sunglasses for the price of 2 pairs back in Norway. And as a girl I had to buy some handbags since I only got 10 back home 😉. Hey..... it was a bargain.
We also went to Florence a city I had no expectation towards. But when arriving there I go bedazzled of its beauty and charm. Even though it was a lot of tourist I never noticed them. I had a lot of space to explore the city without pushing others around. And it was peaceful even though it was a lot of people there. I have never liked wandering around looking at buildings but here, I loved it.
One of the sites I had looked forward to was to visit Venice. I had read much about it and seen a lot of nice pictures of it. The only way for getting to Venice is to take the water road by boat. And as we came nearer and nearer the city of Venice I felt it began my expectation rise higher and higher. The landscape around with Island with previous sanctuaries, the wall they build to try to stop the water, the big boats who laid
in the harbor when we arrived and so on everything made my expectation of the city sky high. But when arriving the city I got really frustrated and sad. This because it was 1 million pigeons shitting everywhere and I could not turn around without knocking another tourist over. To many people and birds placed at the the same place at the same time. So I never got to see much of Venice.
We took a gondola ride and what a rip of. They filled the boat with 6 people and each had to pay 10 euro for a ride that took maybe 10 minutes. Sour and thirsty after a really bad gondola experience we went to find a place to get something to drink. I had heard that sitting at St. Marks place was expensive so I tried to find a place further back. But my travel companion was sour so no place was good enough for him. And of course the one place we should not end up at we ended up at. When we got our bottle of coke and water we heard somebody climpering at a piano far far away. But when we got the
ceque we noticed our drinks costs 10 euro and that we had to pay 15 euro each for a concert.
This is the place to go to for boys who likes Ferrari and wants to shop a little. You got the Ferrari store and this is the place boys becomes like girls shopping. For the girls you got sunglasses, designer bags and clothes and Mourano glass. The only thing I felt was worth buying was the glass because it was reasonable price, I bought some pictures and almost a fake Prada bag. But be very careful buying fakes because the police is not nice if you are taken. When leaving Venice the weather suddenly changed and the boat ride back to the main land with thunder and lightning around us was frightening but bizarre way of fun with a lot of adrenalin. So much that I forgot to get sea sick.
At the end of the vacation we had 3 kg. Parma ham in the bag, 3 kg salame piccante, 4 designer sunglasses, some bags for me, some weight gain because of all the good food, a lot of Ferrari supporter equipment and a lot of good experiences
and some bad. But overall this is a country I am going to visit again and again just for eating, enjoying life, exploring and......shopping!!!
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