I bought a front door off ebay.It cost £87 but £200 for delivery.

In Abruzzo I was getting quotes of 1,000-2,000 euros for antique doors in the style I wanted so the price was pleasing to me!

The seller was so understanding as it too 4 months to arrange delivery.Most sellers will do this for you for not too much.

www.myabruzzohome.com

Wow, this thread is fantastic!! I haven't moved to Italy yet, but will be in January, and while I plan to stock up on my toiletries before i go, I was worried about finding my stuff over there. I checked out the site that was mentioned earlier, but it doesn't carry Estee Lauder. Does anyone know of a place that does?

In my experience, cosmetics are fairly cheaper in Italy rather than abroad, especially if you go to big chain stores such as Douglas, Limoni profumerie, Sephora,...

Small cosmetic shop are often overpriced. You can find all the most famous brand of the haut couture, including Sisley.
The product range may be slightly different ( I assume Sephora does not carry as much stuff as in NYC).

Oh, Sephora is over there!! yeah! They don't carry Lauder (at least, my little store in middle-of-no-where Michigan doesn't) But that's really great information to have! Thanks Pola!

I just thought of something! I am tall enough that, here in the states, I have difficulty finding pants that are long enough. Will I have the same problem in Italy?

quote:

Originally posted by ModenaMichelle:
I just thought of something! I am tall enough that, here in the states, I have difficulty finding pants that are long enough. Will I have the same problem in Italy?

Yup.

In the US I used to buy the "tall" or "long" sizes at the Gap, Banana Republic etc. Here, trousers only come in regular sizes which often look (unintentionally) like cropped pants on me. I'd stock up before you leave. Clothes are cheaper in the US too.

Ditto if you're over a size 8-10 in US sizes - it's very hard for me to find anything which fits my size 10 frame.

and if you are truly tall (5'10" and above), then you will probably have trouble with the shirts/sweaters being long enough in the arms and possibly that your shoulder width is broader...I wear a medium top in the US and have had to to buy XXL over here! Not a pleasant experience

"In the US I used to buy the "tall" or "long" sizes at the Gap, Banana Republic etc. Here, trousers only come in regular sizes which often look (unintentionally) like cropped pants on me."

Oh man, that really stinks. I'm a size 4, so finding the actual size will hopefully be okay, but I guess I'm going to have problems with the length

Susan-- I'm one of those freakish people who have stupidly long legs, but short arms, so... hopefully I'll be okay with the sleeves. I can see my complete meltdown in the dressing room now. Exquisite. I bet I won't be able to wear the shoes either. I wear a size 9 US.

Mango may be ok for you if you need longer length trousers. I am 5ft 5" and always have to have quite a few inches taken off trousers bought there. They do have an online store at www.mango.com which links you to their Italian site and also an outlet shop with some good bargains. I think Zara stock similar clothes also so may be worth trying there.

As for Estee Lauder products, a company I buy from frequently is www.fragrancedirect.co.uk who stock some Lauder products (not full range though). They have a great sale on at the moment (look in the clearance section) and they deliver to Italy for £3.95 per order. I've just bought loads of my Christmas presents from them and saved a fortune!

I think you will be fine with the shoes...I wear a US 10 and have found plenty to waste money on! :-)

In my opinion this is the best place for perfumes, cosmetics, etc. and there are no shipping charges!

http://www12.wowwoman.com/

quote:

Originally posted by Susan:
I think you will be fine with the shoes...I wear a US 10 and have found plenty to waste money on! :-)

Where, where where?! :-) I'm a UK 9 (very occasionally 8.5), European 43. I haven't been very rigorous in my searches as so far I've always bought on trips home to the the UK, the shops in my town only seem to go to 41 at best.

quote:

Originally posted by Susan:
and if you are truly tall (5'10" and above), then you will probably have trouble with the shirts/sweaters being long enough in the arms and possibly that your shoulder width is broader...I wear a medium top in the US and have had to to buy XXL over here! Not a pleasant experience

Another Susan to second that! 5'10'', UK 16 top and 14 lower (lots of sport!), so I enjoy window-shopping and an occasional try-out in Oviesse, normally accompanied by hysterical giggles, especially if my similarly built English friend from up the valley is in town.

I guess I'll just have to hope and hope and hope that shoes won't be a problem! I think I am a 41 in European sizes, as long as they are pointed toe. If they are, it's alllllllll over!!

I have excellent service and delivery from this company / BIOVEA which is in the UK. They have natural supplements and other health products.

Many of which I have never been able to find in Italy.

And, they offer free shipping.


www.biovea.co.uk

Not wanting to plug the UK, (and of course state the obvious) but when you are searching for products, anything, always try doing a search on UK google, you will be suprised what you can find, lots of US products are sold in the UK, for example, I love STASH TEA and found shipping from the US v. expensive, until I did a search and found a small uk tea company that offers a fab service, with lots of STASH!

Great sale on dvd's and cd's here www.virginmegastores.co.uk (will soon be called zavvi.co.uk) and they ship to Italy, shipping costs calculated on checkout (shipping free to UK). They have the Sex and the City Boxed Set (entire series) for £44.99 (last year was £160), De Niro collection (Mean Streets, Casino, Sleepers, Taxi Driver and Cape Fear) for £12.99, all the CSI seasons reduced. Well worth taking a look if you're getting sick of watching RAI!

This is not for delivery in Italy, but I have to say that www.marksandspencer.com have given me fantastic service over Christmas. I think it's only UK delivery for now. I placed various orders even in the week before Christmas and everything arrived on time. They do gift wrapping too.

Same applies to amazon UK (who do deliver to Italy).

Unfortunately it's still early days for internet shopping in Italy. I can't wait for supermarkets to offer online shopping in Italy. Will this ever happen?? I heard a rumour it's available in the north? Anyone know if this is true?

You mean you shop and they deliver? Esselunga does this and I use it on a regular basis. But if you mean like Tesco on-line where you can buy everything from the potatoes to the latest Washer, it is a bit behind on that score! They have started to make new DVD releases available to buy though, but only if they know they are going to be huge sellers. They are a little cheaper as well.

I mean like Tesco yes, where you can do your whole grocery shop from the comfort of your own home. Lovely.

Oh and like Freshdirect in New York. I loved that service. And the best thing was that once you'd placed one weekly grocery shopping order it remembered what you ordered last week so you could just vary it slightly and click and voila shopping done! As someone who doesn't own a car, I'd love to have a similar service here.

Apparently even supermarkets are a relatively new thing in Italy (because of protectionist laws until the 80s for mom and pop shops) - so I imagine it will take a long time for online grocery shopping to catch on. I also read somewhere that Italy has one of the lowest internet usage rates in Europe.

Actually, the online grocery thing in Milan seems to have come and gone in a sense. Esselunga does it and there is another service called Volendo that does it as well. I used to use both of them but about a year or so ago they changed their shipping costs/policies and it was no longer convenient or 'conveniente' to do it. There are only two of us (soon to be three!) and our relatively small weekly grocery basket did not justify the costs of shipping (I haven't checked lately but I seem to remember the new charges being around 10 Euros per delivery, which I thought was just too much on a 50-Euro spesa). There's a Volendo warehouse near my house and they also used to offer the option of free pick-up, which was convenient, but they no longer offer that anymore. Anyway, the point is that I think they have scaled back the online grocery shopping thing up here. It used to be highly promoted and I knew more people who used it but now I seem to hear less about it. One big impediment to its popularity is that Italians like to pick out their own fruit and vegetables, for example. Actually, I do as well, and I wasn't always happy with what got delivered. Anyway, it was still a long way away from FreshDirect, but it was nice when it worked and wasn't that costly.
Michelle

I wanted to mention that LaFeltrinelli now has an online site: http://www.lafeltrinellionline.it

Delivery is within Italy and shipping costs range from 3.90 Euros to 5.50 Euros, which is not bad if you consider delivery is typically next day with SDA. So far there are few titles in English, but it looks like they are slowly expanding that area. It's a far cry from Amazon.com but considering that Italy has not had any good online bookstores up to now, it's a start. Just FYI!
Michelle

I like to pick my own fruit and veg too, but having an online service would be really great for other grocery items, especially the bulky heavy stuff including detersivi, drinks, etc.

I'd love to do my shopping online to save time and also because it's usually so busy here during the times that I can get to the supermarket.