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In Italy there are a thousand ways to use your free time: practising sports, cultivating hobbies, relaxing, developing your culture, going to a concert, a play, a traditional festival, or to watch a sporting event. Or, simply sitting in a bar and enjoying a cappuccino or a glass of good wine, or wandering around the beautiful towns - large and small - admiring and visiting their churches, palaces, monuments, castles, archaeological sites, museums, galleries, squares and streets.

In Italy there is no problem: just being here is already the best way to spend your free time.

Shop for leather goods (Florence, Rome and Milan), silks (Como), truffles (Spoleto and Rome), antiques, clothing, wood carvings, embroidery and lace, silver and gold jewelry, violins, ceramics, objects of marble and alabaster, glass (Venice), decorative paper (Florence and Venice), food products, and wine or liqueur. Also fun to buy are ingenious kitchen utensils/accessories. In Vatican City, look over Vatican postage stamps and a wide variety of religious products (including relics).

Clothing, both men's and women's, is often of excellent quality, with a high style quotient (and often the price tag to match). Custom-made suits can be good buys, and many people consider shoes the best thing to take home from a trip to Italy.

For true bargain hunters, many designer outlets (think Prada, Fendi, Gucci and Armani) dot the northern provinces, especially outside Florence, Como and Milan. McArthur Glen opened the first true outlet mall in 2001 at Serravalle, between Milan and Genoa. It was so successful the company has opened another in Castel Romano, south of Rome, and plans to open a third outside Florence in late 2004. (Florence already has one designer outlet mall, near Leccio Reggello.)