It was throughout the course of my time abroad in Italy that I truly began to understand the concept of suggestion and a new way of living. Living BIG.
Let me clarify.
Everything in Italy it appears, was a SUGGESTION. No smoking sign? Suggestion. Stop sign? Suggestion. Pay your taxes? Suggestion. Concept of personal space? Suggestion. Price tag on an item? Suggestion. Living life too big? Suggestion.
Crossing the streets of Rome was a course in an of itself, because people viewed traffic lights as a suggestion. Someone standing behind you while using an ATM? Let's just say Italians are TERRIBLE at social distancing, Fabio might as well have been taking the money out for you.
But with this amazingly seemingly crazy train of thought, I also kind of loved it. Italians are passionate. Italians, I began to realize are EXTRA. Italians don't give ONE shit. Italians LIVE BIG.
I was watching an Italian couple passionately fight in Campo Dei Fiori one night when a woman threw a bucket of water on them from her apartment above. Now the couple AND the woman were flailing their arms around and wildly screaming. It was quite frankly, amazing.
Italians smoked with abandon. They drank at lunch. Pasta wasn't seen as an entire meal, it was a mere course DURING the meal. They lived life. They lived life big and hard. They talked with their hands. If a man found you attractive, he was going to tell you. This concept of going all in was my jam.
Just because society tells you one thing, don't be afraid to the other. It's ok to break the rules when it comes to certain things.
It is ok to live life, BIG. To live with abandon.
My parents came to visit for a few weeks. I met up with them in Rome after they had left Venice and Florence behind, and together we went to the Amalfi Coast.
My parents had hired a driver to take us. His name was Marcello, and he was totally eccentric, but that's Italy. That's an Italian.
He told us his friend owned a restaurant in Positano and we had to try it.
That's the other thing, in Italy, everyone also 'has a guy.' So we stopped at this breathtakingly beautiful eatery perched on the mountain overlooking the sea, and let the sun warm us as we sat outside.
Marcello ordered everything for us, in fact I think he actually ordered EVERYTHING on the menu. He wanted us to try it all. I remember my parents saying it was the best food they had ever had. My parents were foodies, before that was really a thing.
After the meal, we got back in the car where Marcello drove at gut-wrenching speeds on the very narrow roads, smoking, and talking non stop about everything under the sun, completely amusing my parents.
Italians bring their drinks into the street, they dress like they are always going somewhere important. Quite frankly they have mastered food. I remember a little sandwich shop down below a building near the Pantheon, called, Michelina's. They made this simple mozzarella and tomato sandwich on fresh bread that was killer.
It wasn't fussy, yet over it was the top.
That's Italy.
If there is a motto in Italy, it would be, Go Big or Go Home.
Maybe that's why I loved it there, it was me in country form.
Or at least the 4% that 23 and me told me about.
Xoxo,
C.
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