A mall

A relatively quiet day today as we ventured to a shopping mall (Adigeo)  about 6kms from the apartment.

As far as shopping malls go it was:

Modern

Bright

Very spacious

Well patronised

Had free (which is unusual) easy to use (also unusual) underground car parking 

Mainly clothing stores

While it seemed like we walked a million miles around it by the time we had finished and returned home 5 hours after leaving we had only walked 2.4 kms - all that effort for little reward!!

I thought as I saw how well stocked the stores were that if every resident of Verona called and purchased 5 items of clothing each it would barely make a dent in the stock on display across the mall.

Filled the car up on the way home and paid the highest per litre price so far on the trip but only €0.02/litre more than websites were indicating the price of diesel was in Italy prior to us leaving home and the extra may have been due to the fact that an attendant filled it up. At least there is competition as in Verona I have seen it ranging from €1.679 to €2.059/litre and within 200m of where we filled there was a servo pricing it at €1.759/litre.

Today I checked back against the number of kilometres we had estimated we would have driven by this point of the trip and our estimated travel was 2688 against an actual distance travelled of 2706

An item on the TV news this morning was highlighting the storm damage in Milan yesterday and showed large trees completely ripped out of the ground and debris strewn everywhere and if I understood the item correctly 3 people killed - we feel for our lady friend from yesterday.

Tomorrow we move further on out towards the eastern coast of Italy to Ravenna which was severely flooded as recently as 17 May this year and the TV pictures we saw were of cars being washed down the road and people being evacuated from their properties - will it be cleaned up by now or still look like Gisborne following the January cyclone?

Some thoughts on differences noticed between Germany & Italy so far:

A typical German lunch is cheaper than an Italian lunch

Italy have a per person cover charge in restaurants 

A typical Italian evening meal is cheaper than a German meal but the cover charge evens the cost out

Supermarket food prices very similar 

Doesn’t appear to be a tipping culture in Italy

Easier driving on Germany city roads

German roads less chaotic

German drivers more “polite” and less “aggressive”

Doesn’t appear that there is a charge to use public toilets in Italy (so far)

To checkin to an Italian hotel/apartment you need to produce your passport - in Germany not required 

There is a more obvious Police presence on the streets in Italy compared with Germany

Kms driven to date 2706

Kms walked to date 404.9

Spent on Diesel €203.66

Highest price paid to date for diesel €1.699 Verona

Lowest price paid to date for diesel €1.479 Freiburg

Spent on tolls €27.60