You know that romantic idea of living in Italy— sipping espresso at charming cafés, eating gourmet pizza in stylish outfits, and just generally living your romantic European dream. I had that fantasy, too. And yes, sometimes, it was just like that. But living in Italy wasn’t all gelato and glamour. When I moved to a remote village in Abruzzo in July 2022 to marry my Italian husband, the reality hit hard. I didn’t speak the language. I missed my family. And the cultural differences? It wasn’t always easy. Now that we’ve moved to Tokyo (wild, right?), I’ve had time to reflect—and I realized there’s a lot I miss about Italy… and a few things I definitely don’t. So here are the things I miss about Italy and the challenges I faced.
What I Miss About Italy: The Fashion
With access to quality fabrics, timeless cuts, and attention to detail, Italian fashion isn’t just a style— it’s a lifestyle. Even basic stuff like socks and underwear were better made. I learned to care about fabric like100% cotton, cashmere blends, and breathable linen. I also adopted Italy’s seasonal dressing mindset: not just layering for the weather, but choosing colors and textures that reflect the time of year. I’d shop mostly during sale season in January or July (otherwise things were very expensive). But I found myself slowly building a wardrobe that I loved. I also loved wandering street markets in Florence for leather bags, or browsing shops like Calzedonia and Tezenis for well-made basics that didn’t break the bank.
What I Don’t Miss About Italy: Having to Always Dress up
As much as I admired Italy’s strong fashion culture, it could be exhausting. I don’t miss feeling the side-eye for having wet hair or having to dress up just to buy milk. Sometimes I just want to be ugly in peace. I deeply missed athleisure and the ease of “just popping out” in whatever I had on. In Italy, you dress up for everything, and that level of formality, while elegant, could be a little time consuming.
What I Miss About Italy: The Food
Italy fed me well. From handmade pasta, delicious pizza, to local wines, fantastic food felt less like a luxury and more like a right. Have you ever had fresh unrefrigerated Mozzarella di bufala? As my husband would say: Mama mia, che buona! And with so much variety between regions, every meal felt like an opportunity to discover something new. While training for my marathon, I never had to stress about carbs—Italy made carb-loading an art form.
What I Don’t Miss About Italy: The Food Rules
Italians famously despise pineapple on pizza but did you know there are many other food rules in Italy? Italian food culture is deeply rooted in tradition—and with that comes an unspoken (and sometimes spoken) list of rules. Milk in coffee is for the morning only. Want a cappuccino at 3 PM? Prepare for scandal. Chicken parm? Doesn’t exist. One does not mix chicken with pasta. There’s a strong sense of right and wrong around food in Italy. Which, on one hand, I understand—recipes and customs have been passed down for generations. On the other hand, I often felt out of sync with these customs. For example: I prefer savory breakfasts, and the typical sweet breakfast common in Italy left my blood sugar in a terrible state. While I admire the passion behind food in Italy, the rigidity sometimes clashed with my personal habits.
What I Miss About Italy: Traveling
Living in Italy meant having world-class destinations right at our doorstep. From Milan, we could hop on a train and be in Venice, Florence, or Lake Como within hours—without needing to board a plane. We even managed weekend getaways to Paris and Switzerland.
With so many neighboring countries just a few hours away, it’s the perfect base for exploring Europe. I miss how easy it was to pack a small bag and be somewhere beautiful by lunch. We barely scratched the surface, and I still daydream about all the spots we didn’t get to.
What I Don’t Miss About Italy: Limited Convenience
Italy taught me how to slow down—but not always in ways I liked. In big cities like Milan, you could usually find shops open late. But outside the city, most stores closed by 8 p.m., and many shut down for several hours in the afternoon. Gyms and even town office services shut down for weeks in August (August is when most people in Itay go on summer vacation I discovered). That became a real challenge when we were planning our September wedding.
Even once we were back in Milan, it didn’t get that much easier. Any time we needed to deal with official documents, it felt like a maze of slow processes and unclear instructions. And while Milan’s train network was great in theory, we ran into frequent delays and frequent last-minute strikes. I respect the slower pace of things… but sometimes I just needed stuff to work.
This isn’t me hating on Italy. Living there was one of the hardest and best things I’ve done. Some days I felt totally lost, and others I felt lucky just to be there. Italy taught me that moving somewhere beautiful doesn’t make life easier—it just makes it different. While I missed my friends and family back home, I made new friends in Italy, and now I get to miss them too. That’s the bittersweet part of living abroad: the more places you live, the more people you carry in your heart. And Italy didn’t give me a fairy-tale version of life abroad. It gave me something better: perspective. I see home differently now. I see myself differently too. I’ll always miss certain things about living there. Others, not so much. I’m grateful for the time we had there. And maybe one day, we’ll go back. But for now, it’s just part of my story. So if you ever get the chance, live somewhere new! Just don’t expect it to be easy—no matter how good the gelato is.
For more of our adventures or to see our life in Japan, check out these other posts: