5 Signs You Have Adjusted to Life in Italy

This week, our guest expat author, Cassandra Tesi, shares her experience on living in Italy. Do you know anyone else showing these signs? Read on and get in touch to share your stories too!

Moving to Italy is all pasta and gelato until you are knee-deep in bureaucracy and realize that “on time” is more of a suggestion. But somewhere along the way, you start sipping coffee like a local and prioritizing the simple joy of enjoying the day.

Once we found ourselves embracing these quirks with a smile, we realized we might have finally adjusted to life in Italy as we approach our third year here. Here are five signs you’re officially living our Italian dream.

1. Mastering the Art of Timing Around Store Closures

Italy’s regions are wonderfully diverse, but one thing remains consistent throughout the country: riposo, the midday break that falls after lunch and before the evening kicks off. Particularly in the southern regions, you can count on most stores and restaurants shutting their doors around 1–2 PM and reopening around 4–5 PM.

For Americans like us who last lived in the hustle of NYC, where you can grab anything you need at any hour, riposo can feel like an inconvenient hurdle at first. But give it a few months, and you’ll find that this pause introduces a rhythm that encourages a slower pace, more intentional schedules, and a clearer sense of priorities.

While store closures may start to dictate your plans, one thing you can always count on is the local bar (aka a café) staying open—because in Italy, the idea of not finding coffee when you need it is simply unthinkable.

2. Ditching Google Maps: Learning to Just Ask

We noticed this habit among Italians within just days of driving around. On local, rural, or even city roads, drivers would stop and pull over to the nearest pedestrian to ask for directions. Total strangers would chat for minutes about routes they could probably find on their phones. But no—that’s not the Italian way.

Asking someone who knows the area firsthand is always the superior method. After all, no GPS can rival a local who knows the shortcut that will save you five minutes (and maybe a toll).

While we don’t stop to ask for directions as often, we’ve definitely adopted a more low-tech approach: following physical road signs. Italy is surprisingly well-marked when it comes to signage, and as long as you know the name of the town you’re headed to, GPS becomes almost unnecessary.

3. Pasta-Free Days? Unthinkable.

Although it might sound like a stereotype to assume Italians eat pasta every day, but after living here, we’ve found it’s absolutely true. For the most part, a typical Italian will have pasta at least once a day, usually at lunchtime. In smaller towns or rural areas, you can even count on households eating homemade pasta—it’s just part of the culture and tradition.

It took us a while to fully embrace this tradition, not because we don’t love pasta, but because we needed time to figure out simple, healthy, and convenient variations to work into our weekly meals. Our daughter, who attends preschool in Italy, now eats pasta with red sauce almost every day as part of her four-course lunch. At this point, it’s practically a family ritual that can’t be messed with.

4. Understanding That ‘Later’ Is a Flexible Concept

In Italy, time becomes a fluid concept, especially when making plans or wrapping up conversations with next steps in mind. Whether it’s a plumber promising to finish the job “later” or a hostess assuring you your table will be ready “later,” nailing down a precise timeframe can feel impossible. But over time, you learn that “later” has many different meanings, depending on the situation—and that’s perfectly okay.

While many people might lose their minds over not knowing whether “later” means five minutes or next week, this cultural quirk has taught us a humbling lesson. Is anything in life really that urgent? After living in Italy, we’ve realized that most things we once thought needed to be done immediately can, in fact, wait.

5. Summer Bedtime? What Bedtime?

When our daughter was a newborn, we stuck to a firm bedtime schedule, determined not to let late nights become a habit. But after moving to Italy, we noticed kids—even babies—out and about late into the evening. Here, bedtime is a relaxed concept, with children naturally adapting to their parents’ schedules. During our first year in Italy, we were hesitant to embrace this cultural norm, but oh, how quickly humans adapt!

Since then, we’ve let go of rigid routines and allowed our family to go with the flow. The result? A more flexible and adaptable child. In the summertime, we don’t bat an eye if we’re out until 11 PM, and miraculously, during the school year, she still transitions to an earlier bedtime without a hitch. No harm, no foul!

Do you relate to these signs or have more to add? Comment with your thoughts below!

Author Bio:

Cassandra Tresl is the author and owner of Adventures of Ace, a travel blog that helps fellow adventurers uncover underrated destinations, budget travel hacks and family travel tips. She serves as the head co-pilot on road trips and is known to get captivated for hours by a search in Google Maps. When she isn’t writing, Cassandra enjoys navigating life abroad in Italy and cooking for her daughter and husband.