If anyone's offended by my wisecrack, then I apologise. But the fact is this term PIGS is used frequently in the financial news in Australia, often as a heading on graphs depicting various characteristics and trends in these economies of Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain.
Rob's general comments in his previous post tend to resonate with my own limited experience of Italy in 2005. I remember well the first time we sat down in a local restaurant to sample the famous Italian pizza.
It wasn't a 'posh' restaurant by any standards; just an average restaurant. We were amazed at the high prices for what we understood was standard fare in Italy, the originator of the pizza dish.
We settled on a basic Pizza Margherita, hoping that the high price would be justified by an excellent taste compared with what we were used to in Australia.
Disappointingly it wasn't. It was the most basic pizza I'd ever ordered. It was not only double the price of a similar style of pizza in Australia in a similar standard of restaurant, but half as delicious.
Of course, we could have made it more delicious by ordering additional toppings, but that would have made the pizza 3x the Australian price. My point is not that italy is not capable of cooking delcious pizzas, but that most things (and services) in Italy seemed outrageously expensive compared with the equivalent product in my home country, in 2005.
There were exceptions of course. The exception that sticks in my mind was the price of Italian wine. It was just as good value over there as Australian wine is over here. I particularly liked the idea that a glass of wine was available at any time of the day, in any cafe, including small cafeterias at the railway station.
I just hope that, as a result of this current economic crisis, Italy will become a more affordable place to visit. I was rather disappointed that the Cellini sculpture of Perseus holding the head of Medusa, situated near the Piazza della Signoria in Florence, was undergoing restoration whilst I was there. I'd like to return to do a better job without the intrusive background.
Here's one of the two shots I took of that statue. As you can see, Hopeless! Ruined!