Driving, Parking and Ubiquitous Eateries
Driving
I think anyone who has ever lived in, visited or even imagined a city that was built before the mass production of cars or carriages has a fair understanding of how tiny and strange streets can seem in comparison to the modern paved highways. A lot of cities in America have inner cities that are more walkable than drivable and I expected when going to a literally ancient European city that this would be the case. And boy was I right.
The streets here are narrow. And yet somehow, most of them seem to go in two directions despite being largely physically unable to hold two cars side by side. There are some streets that only allow one direction traffic but hell if you can easily tell which just by looking. It is like some sort of magical guide book that is jus downloaded into your brain the moment you are ballsy enough to attempt driving. I mean, as much as I miss the autonomy and simple pleasure of driving, I am very happy not to in this city lest I lose what is left of my scraps of sanity.
Of course watching the public transportation is kinda worse. It is flat out terrifying to face front in the bus and see how close they get to hitting people, cars, walls…and the turns and the breaking….*shudder*. Ignorance, my friend, is bliss. Especially in this case.
Parking
An additional reason that the very thought of driving in this city just gives me the shudders is the parking. Now, I frequently bitch about people’s parking jobs. And, while I acknowledge that my ability to parallel park is rather hilarious, I at least only attempt it in dire circumstances and I stay proper amounts of space away from other stuff and between the lines etc. Parking in Italy seems to be something between a sport and a hobby. I have seen people park face in on the side of a street. Between two other cars that are parallel parked. Or people who just seem to get to a part of the road and decide that its good enough and get out of the car. Or they will park beside the row of cars parked on the side of the road so you effectively have two rows of car on the side of the road leaving an even more terrifyingly small amount of space to park in.
I can be calm and joke about it because I am not having to deal with it. Should I ever randomly move here and start driving, I’d eventually just go mad and take sledge hammers to a few windows. *twitch*
Pizzeria and Gelatoria
(I know I misspelled that last one but whatever)
Now, about every five feet in this city, regardless of where you are, you can make a full 360 turn and find at least one pizzeria or one gelato eatery (didn’t even try now did I?). This typically includes INSIDE shopping centers and public transportation terminals. Now, you might think I’m exaggerating (which I am but only slightly) or that I am only referring to the more touristy areas of town, but really, I’m not. Where the St. John’s campus sits, is in a fairly untouristy area of town. This is very evident since most of the places here have only a couple people who speak any English at all whereas five blocks down, the menu at pizzocolto…or whatever… is in both English and Italian and the waiters (Guiseppe!) speaks fluent English. All the same, there are two pizzeria’s within one block (small block) of the campus and one gelato place within a block with two more (that I know of) within two block radius.
They are everywhere. And what is worse is they are typically pretty cheap so the ability to resist the allure of cold gelato on the increasingly hotter days is occasionally just non-existent. Even more, they don’t particularly seem to exist soley for tourists since typically, the people I see inside of the places all speak Italian.
And that, I guess, is the secret to it all. Italians have the second longest life expectancy in the world because they have a diet of pizza (fantastically amazing pizza, not the American crap)and gelato.
I can deal with that.