Goodbye to Italy...

...and some lessons from our time among the "bella chaos" (the beautiful chaos – how Italians apparently describe how Italy runs):

• Water — Italy is weird about water (to an Australian anyway) — many Italian cities have permanently running water taps scattered around for public use (especially noticeable in Rome), but Italy was also the only place we've been that regularly had dual-flush toilets.

• Public transport is of extremely variable quality:
• Trains everywhere? Superb! On time (maybe not to Swiss standards, but pretty good), well organised, easy ticketing and use, generally just a pleasure to use.

• Metros? Where they exist, easy to use, cheap, regular. Occasionally bonkers busy, but at understandable places — medium-sized tick!
• Buses, on the other hand... Indecipherable or non-existent timetables, utterly unreliable for timing (except for Venice — they were pretty good, if still indecipherable without local assistance), ticketing options that ranged from the bizarre (chat on WhatsApp to get a QR code ticket) to odd-but-useful (buy a pack of ten tickets in the local app, then activate as many as you need — in the app — for your trip/group just before you hop on). Range from a solid do-not-recommend (Rome — where every bus we tried was over an hour late or just never appeared), to you-don't-really-have-many-other-options-but-it's-probably-almost-as-fast-to-walk (Florence — a slight exaggeration, but not by much), to actually-decent-but-good-luck-figuring-it-out (Naples and Venice).

• SMOKING (and vaping) — it was everywhere and vile! In doorways, bus stops, outdoor restaurant areas, even on unoccupied buses (i.e. the driver). Zero consideration to anyone around (including small children) — the smell was almost everywhere, and just gross. Felt like Australia in the 80s.
• Graffiti — a Roman invention (sort of), it's very common across Italy. Unlike in Australia, it's more often (very) artistic, potentially political and generally interesting (sometimes all three). We often quite liked it.

• Service interactions — hilariously variable. At one extreme was the check-out operator at a supermarket in Rome who managed to process everything without looking at me once or interrupting her ongoing conversation with the next operator along. At the other extreme was the local pizza place in Rome (about 500m from the supermarket above), where the server had a 10-minute, translated-by-another-customer conversation trying to explain all the weird and wonderful pizza toppings to us (and gave us some delicious fried pasta to try). He then came out and smoked next to us while we ate, but see above!
• Funeral notices — it seems like these are just plastered up on walls around the local neighbourhood. We first saw this in Naples, but it was everywhere. In Venice they were laminated and maybe blue-tacked up, potentially to protect the buildings. Probably much more effective for the intended audience than a notice in the paper.

• Tiny cars — they're awesome, I wish we had them! To be fair, some of the parking efforts we saw in Italy (leaving aside a national tendency to double or triple park, or just pull up wherever) would certainly be easier with some of these cars.