ITALY Readers's Tips - Basically it is included don't ask, you pay what is on the bill.nlike as in the US, there is no expectation of 1520 percent on top in Europe, just as you pay shop prices as marked in Europe, there is no lastminute tax added as in the US. But because some foreigners (mostly USAmericans tip out of habit, excessively for European standards, there has been a mission creep, so now in the places where they serve a lot of foreigners day in day out, they can give you the long look if you don't tip they have learned, and it pays to do it, so they will act as if a tip must be forthcoming.specially if you ask. When you find yourself to be the only foreigner in a small outoftheway local restaurant, observe: Locals tip a little token something, a few Euros, nothing like 1520 percent, unless there was a huge elaborate production involved for a special occasion and so on. But as I said, mission creep.

Very sound advice Michael Thank you, Michael. I appreciate the advice.BY the way, in a pretravel query about suitability of dress in Italian restaurants, you noted it was a good idea to dress modestly, if not formally. We didn't get to as many cities as we had hoped (I am not disabled but I do have more limited mobility but I noticed that in Venice, casual dress seemed common everywhere, even in better restaurants (read better as "more pretentious.Even at a concert, few male attendees wore coats and ties.Women tended to wear dressier pants suits (even my wife.I wore a sport shirt with a sweater over, and no sport coat and was not out of place. Forty KM away, in Padova, more men were wearing coats and ties in the more casual restaurant where we lunched, than you'd find in Minneapolis, a fairly cosmopolitan midwest city.

One thing I noticed in some restaurants in Florence, Italy is they charge you a "sitting fee" of 3 to 5 Euro per person.o, if you look at the menu, order food, and the price stated is say 17 Euro.he wine was 10 Euro, you would expect to pay 27 Euro.owever, with the added fee, your bill for two could be as high as 37 Euro.ot all restaurants did this, so I began to look for the "sitting fee" which is usually posted in small print beside the door,and when I saw it, I passed that restaurant by for the one two doors down that had no fee. John B.

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