My wife and I decided to finally go to Europe and visited a lot of cities around the Mediterranean. We stayed in Rome five days, so my comments mainly reflect it.

1. There are no fat carts running all over the airports. People are in much better shape than what you see here. The only scooters you see are the thousands of Vespas outside the stores and on the streets, not ones for overweight people to ride inside the stores. You do a lot of walking there. We averaged 10 miles a day per our step count.
2. Most of the streets are basically alleys and Rome tends to repeat itself. Walking down a typical street you see a huge cathedral and walk in to see the most incredible art work you have ever seen, next door are three outdoor cafes in a row, next is a gelato place, leather purse / backpack/ wallet shop, a huge incredible fountain, gelato place, leather purse store, souvenirs shop, a huge cathedral with the most incredible art you have ever seen, 2000 year old ruins, another huge cathedral, gelato shop, leather goods store, 5 or 7 more outdoor cafes, another huge cathedral with the most incredible art work, roller skate looking cars zooming all over the place, a huge fountain, gelato shop, 3 more outdoor cafes, something 2000 years old, Oops almost got hit again by a Vespa, leather goods store, souvenir shop, a huge cathedral with the most incredible art work, three outdoor cafes, a bunch of incredibly old stuff….. etc.
3. People tend to dress nicer. You see people in jeans and stuff but most of the women, especially the younger ones, dress nice. I didn’t see any yoga pants or sweats. No unnatural hair colors, no one that seemed confused about their sexual identity, no septum piercings, no butchy looking women, no trans looking people.
4. The pick pocket thieves did not show up anywhere we went. In fact, Rome seemed to be the safest city I have ever visited. You could walk around at midnight down those little alley looking streets and pass people with no fear. Now they do love their spray paint and many areas of the city have been plastered with random crap sprayed on the walls, not art, it resembles scribbled words.
5. The price marked on something is the cost. Whatever taxes there are have already been included. See a “Roma” baseball cap with a 5 Euro tag, it cost exactly 5 Euros unless you want to negotiate. Eat a nice meal with your family that adds up to 40 Euros, that is all they expect you to pay. Only a couple of times did they even give me the option to tip and if you hit 5%, they are grateful and will thank you, but if the tip option does pop up when you scan your card, they typically hit “no tip” before you have a chance to see it.
6. Eating out is fairly inexpensive, especially since those menu prices don’t add a tax and tipping isn’t requested. Yes, the menus are largely pasta dishes and pizzas. The stereotype of food choices was accurate. I wasn’t a fan of the tiny coffee cups but all other menu items included plenty of food. Every street is loaded with outdoor cafes, even down the alley looking streets you suddenly see a cafe loaded with people. They won’t bring you a check until you request it. Since you don’t drive to restaurants and they typically have most seating outside, they prefer to have people walking by see a crowded restaurant. No one seems to be in a huge hurry either. The waiters are very friendly but they aren’t going to check on you while you are eating and will not be refilling your drinks unless you motion to them and ask for a second drink. They don’t use soda dispensers and any water or soda you ask for is in a bottle, so no free refills.
7. American items are expensive. This wasn’t really a surprise. We saw very few American cars. The most common ones were the small cars manufactured by Jeep. A lot of the police cars were those. We wanted to buy an extra suitcase and any American brand I recognized was about three times the cost. I assume the high prices are due to tariffs.
8. Don’t assume public restrooms are free or that you can flush toilet paper. I saw very few public restrooms in Rome and the ones I did see were in museums. In Rome you can flush toilet paper but in many places, Athens for example, you put your nasty paper in a trash can by the toilet. Many public restrooms don’t have seats, so if you gotta poop or you are a female, you squat. Keep plenty of 1 Euro coins in your pocket since it is common to have to pay to use public bathrooms.