Kay

Lenore, it was per day!

Sherry

Well, we were just in Italy, and I thought the prices were much higher than the last time I was there (August 2000). I thought this to be true of Chianti, but not so much in Rome.<BR>My brother says that is because Chianti is Yuppie heaven and it has always been expensive.<BR>The last time I was there, my Mom bought a particular type of kitchen towel when we were shopping in San Gig. She wanted more of them and I knew the shop as we bought them together. Well, when I went into the shop to buy them for her I had found the the price per item had doubled. <BR>I don't know if this is because of the Euro or not. This is really the only specific example I can recite as I knew exactly how much we had purchased them for.<BR>It just seemed that things were more expensive.

Alice Twain

Sherry<BR><BR>I agree with your brother. Chianti (currently called Chiantishire) is overpriced because it is crowded by too many top-end tourists from Uk and Usa, and it is growing more and more expansive, but it is not a euro problem. If you had just stayed in a nearby but not as famous area as Colline Metallifere (to the west of Chianti) ot Casentino (to the north) you would have noticed how much everything would have been cheaper.

russ

Hi all,<BR><BR>I guess it was my trip report that Nancy was referring to in her original post. This is what I had said...<BR><BR>"Over all, restaurant prices seemed to be about 30% higher than when we had lived in Italy from 1997 - 1999. This was confirmed by friends we visited in Bologna and Milan, who mentioned that this increase occurred during the transition from lira to euro."<BR><BR>I only mentioned restaurant prices, not all prices. For example I noticed that menu items that were about 12.000 lire 3 years ago are about 8 euro now. Since 1 euro is equal to "roughly" 2000 lire, that would be equivalent to about 16.000, or an increase of about 33%. A coffee in Bologna 3 years ago was about 1200-1500 lire at the counter (which is about .60 - .75 euro). 2 weeks ago it was .83 euro to 1.00 euro. <BR><BR>I was not implying that this was an across the board increase, just restaurants. As I said, my Italian friends in 3 cities confirmed trend this as well. Of course, prices for other items may have decreased, which might balance out the food increases and result in the average being about the same, pre and post euro.