August in Italy

Canadian summer is weird. It may be rainy, cloudy, hot or chilly. (#canadianproblems). No matter how humid it gets all the malls and shops are open. On the weekends most of them are open till 7pm. I went to Italy in the beginning of August and the weather was amazing! (And by amazing I mean it was real summer weather there that I was enjoying every second of it.) But I didn’t know that everything closes either early or shops are just closed. August for Italians is the month of the summer when they go to the seaside of Italy, that’s why most of the shops are closed, but tourist’s sights are open. Another reason some shops are closed is because of the hot humid weather. They even have a special name for it. Streets are pretty quiet, but everything get busier when people start coming out in the evening time, except tourists, who are out the entire day. My friends and I had to pull long missions to find a restaurant that was open where we could go and eat and enjoy our time together. But hey, it’s a part of their culture that I learned about Italy :)

When walking in Rome, we could find small water fountains with drinking water. Isn’t it so smart? Especially when your bottle of water finishes, you can easily go and refill it anywhere.  OR you can refresh yourself with cold water and get a really nice tan without trying hard.

P.S oh and by the way you should really try Italian ice cream (gelato)! The most delicious thing over there besides real Italian pizza of course.

Tourist problems in Italy - Tips

Rome, Italy is a lovely place to travel in summer time. The weather is amazing compared to unstable Canadian weather (where I live) when one day rains and another day it's humid.

All you need there is comfortable summer stylish pieces. Here's a TIP for ladies of course, do NOT ever take any kinds of heels with you!!! I learned it hard way. I grabbed few heels with me, because I thought I would need them at some point of the trip...But... I never wore them. Next time, I won't even bother taking heels with me. Unless you really cannot go a day without heels, then you might prefer taking wedges. The streets of Rome are old fashioned (you can see it in the picture),

which makes it impossible to wear any kinds of heels. I remember when I was wandering around with my best friend, we were wearing some kind of fancy shoes, and all we did is look down so we wouldn’t trip or fall, but of course we couldn’t avoid it…

Whoever traveled to Italy knows my pain and whoever is planning to travel in the future, keep that in mind! :)  It’s probably the major issue of travellers who are loving the architecture and trying so hard not to fall while walking around and being busy taking pictures.

Besides that, Rome is beautiful. I got very lucky to live 7 min away from the heart of Rome, Vatican City.

Since you’ll be a tourist, you may need to get used to seeing people coming up to you and telling you to buy flowers for your friends, or buy tickets to skip the lines (which are insanely long and tiring) to museums, buy a bottle of water because it’s very hot and stuff like that. That’s something I couldn’t get used to personally. My friends and I tried to escape those “sketchies” but at the same time we enjoyed the moment of being most valued tourists in Rome.