How to Post things to Italy

You might think that mailing something to Italy would be as simple as popping it in a letter box.  You would be wrong though, for this is often when the trouble starts.

I’ve lost count of the number of stories I’ve heard from expats in Italy who have lost things in the post here.  More often than not it is items sent to Italy which tend to disappear into the ether.  I know, I have had direct experience of this.  Two things which stick in my mind are a Christmas card which never arrived, and a few humble pairs of Marks and Spencer’s socks which my mum sent to me a few years back.  Said socks never made it to my house in Italy.  Yes, I know that these items were not life threateningly important, but losing them was annoying, and others have lost much more valuable items.

Other more costly items which I have heard of that have gone astray include a watch, and a Play Station, plus many other things which simply never arrived in Italy.

It’s not just sending things to Italy which can be haphazard, but also sending items out of Italy.  Whether or not the letters, packs and parcels reach their destination tends to be down to chance.  I cannot say whether it is Italian postal workers who take a shine to whatever people are sending to one another, or whether it is the postal people in the countries through which the post passes, but I have my suspicions with regard to Italy’s post people.

This how-to guide post, if you’ll excuse the postal pun, may help you avoid losing things to Italy’s rather erratic postal system. Read more

Snow Shoe Hike, Lillaz, Near Cogne 2009

Last weekend I escaped to the mountains to stay with a couple of friends in a dinky little apartment they have rented in a tiny little village called Lillaz in the Valle d’Aosta area of Italy.

Lillaz, which sits at around 5000 feet above sea level, is just down the road from another somewhat larger mountain village known as Cogne, to which I’d been about four years before.

Cogne is a charming place, even if when I was first there what most struck me the most was the extreme cold which descended on the place after the sun hid itself behind the surrounding mountains.  My ‘reward’ for having underestimated the cold on that occasion was a two day stay in bed with something resembling bronchitis.

This time though, the cold was nowhere near as intense, and I was better prepared.  Winter in this area is now starting, albeit a little reluctantly, to give way to spring.  Not that you would think so initially, for the area is still covered by five feet of snow.

We spent our time drinking wine and a few other mountain brews, sampling the local cuisine, and going for a snow shoe equipped stroll in the mountains.  I took my camera, and came back with more than a few shots, some of which you will see if you read on. Read more

Better than Nutella!

Nutella, Ferrero’s universally popular hazelnut and chocolate spread is perhaps one of the more unusual Italian products to have attained worldwide fame.

There are even quite a number of Nutella fan groups on Facebook, and a quick search on the name of this well loved spread on Google.com reveals around 5 million results.  Nutella even has its very own Wikipedia entry.  Not a bad achievement for a spread made in a country which is not really famed for its

chocolate products.  I don’t think many would disagree if I say that Nutella is something of a ‘cult’ product.  There’s even a World Nutella Day, for heavens sake!  February the 5th 2009!

Surely, nothing could possibly be better than Nutella.  Well, maybe there is something, and this week’s Friday Food and wine feature will reveal all. Read more

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