When you are the fluent Italian speaker in a group of 13 at a restaurant, you
don't get much air between bites.

When you want a large bag at the supermarket, don't ask the attractive
salesclerk for a "grosso buffo" unless you are much better looking than I am.

The six-foot-high interior wooden shutters next to the ancient coin exhibit
in the ducal palace in Urbino are fitted on to pins only 1/4" deep.  When one
hits the stone floor, the sound will draw the attention even of the men
guarding the Piero della Francesca's, one floor away.

It is not possible to tell if giant, snarling mastiffs on a remote path in
Umbria are threatening you in Italian or English.

Decline and fall: kids today don't think it's cheating to play Marco-Polo
with "underwater radar", keeping your eyes open as long as you're below the
surface.

In school, I skipped over the abstract, stylized Byzantine mosaics at Ravenna
as fast as I could.  But when I first stepped inside San Vitale two weeks
ago, I cried.

Throughout Italy, I saw not a single "bronze" replacement window - but plenty
of plants growing on buildings.  (Ralph: inverse relation?)

Central tower cranes are common even on modest projects, like 2 story houses.

In the Tyrol, I saw three barns in construction, each one framed in the
traditional criss-cross timbering (12 x 12?) of the older buildings.

They put the rocks on the tile roofs because they lay them dry, and without
fasteners.

The plague of rooftop HVAC units that has swept through New York is absent in
Venice.  If that's the tradeoff for terrible air conditioning, I'll take it.

There are no Gothic (pointed) arches in the Jewish Ghetto of Venice, although
the tour guides say there is no religious connection.

The medieval chastity belt in the Doge's palace covered all eventualities.

Aluminum hiking staffs are technically superior to wooden ones, but, in a
lightning storm on ridgetop in the Dolomites, you begin to see that there are
wider issues than the comfort of your knees.

Driving an Alfa Romeo makes you feel like you're young and single again -
even it it seats 6.

Sign me,    Al Italia