ROME LETTER/Paddy Agnew: Around lunchtime last Saturday, a gentle breeze was blowing across the lake here in Trevignano.
With average midday temperatures around 34 Celsius, the formally dressed wedding party who had gathered for a reception on the lakefront at the "La Vela" bar was doubtless glad of both the shade and the breeze.
As the guests imbibed their fruit juices, Buck's Fizz and proseccos, I was reminded, not for the first time, that common or garden or lakefront street theatre just has to be the number two favourite sport of Italians. (Football is obviously the number one, silly).
On one side of the lakefront cortile was the wedding party. On the other sat the bar's regular clientele, admittedly much reduced given the hour.
The regulars, ourselves included of course, were only too happy to sit and gawp. The wedding party, needless to say, was only too happy to be gawped at.
Indeed, what is the point of a wedding, at least in Italy, if you don't expose yourself to maximum gawp from friends, neighbours and total strangers alike?
As the bride moved around her wedding party distributing the regulation "confetti" (sugar-coated almonds) given to all the guests, it was hard not to conclude, and not for the first time, that Italians have an instinctive knack for graceful, elegant socialising.
That little scene, allied to a week of quiet living and lake swims, did much to take the sting out of my return to Italy 10 days ago, after nearly seven weeks on the road from Lisbon to Rome, passing via Obidos, Coimbra, Burgos, Salamanca, Pamplona and Provence, to name but some.
For many years now, this household has been addicted to the travelling holiday.
By travelling holiday I mean one where you are on the move every day and where you stay in a different place every night. In short, a holiday where you are on a mini-exploration of the cultural, sociological sort every day, which can take the form simply of ordering the local breakfast in the local bar every morning.
Such travelling is inevitably an impressionistic business, yet the impressions are very definite. You get a sense of how a town is run or a region governed simply by looking for road signs, car parks and, most importantly, for illegal building and intrusive billboard advertising.
You get a sense of the people, their concerns and their affability simply by dealing with dry-cleaners, garages, chemists and local supermarkets.
In that context, after travelling 3,000-odd kilometres from Lisbon to Rome, the first impression that modern Italy generates is one of a shoddy tiredness.
Wherever we went in Portugal, Spain or southern France, we were overwhelmed by a sense of local, civic pride.
Be it Burgos, be it Pamplona or Arles, the streets were daily washed, the rubbish bins daily emptied, flower beds daily watered, whilst public loos were plentiful and car parks everywhere cheaply and easily available.
Drive into Turin, not an insignificant Italian city, after crossing the border with France and you are immediately overwhelmed by unkempt city streets, dirty footpaths, no flower-beds, dust and, above all, omnipresent billboard advertising that uses naked or semi-naked women (or parts of women) to advertise anything and everything from mobile phones to air conditioners.
If you live in Italy, you get so used to such advertising, much of which would simply be unacceptable anywhere else in the developed world, that you, and Italians like you, simply do not notice it any more.
When you return from outside Italy, it hits you like a kick in the teeth.
Fashion designer Valentino once memorably summed up the feeling when saying that, every time he returned to Italy after travelling abroad, he felt he had returned to "a very poor country, inhabited by very rich people".
In truth, the lack of information, the lack even of public loos or car parks - two fundamental items that hit the traveller first up - give the impression of a poor country.
Yet Italy, a G8 nation with an economy as big as Britain's, is clearly no poor country.
Italy's problem is not one of wealth but rather energy - human energy and perhaps even female energy.
During the San Fermin celebrations in Pamplona, it amazed us to see that the city mayor was a woman in her early 30s.
This may seem a mere detail. Yet half of the current Spanish government cabinet is female.
In Italy, this would simply be impossible.
Italy is currently stuck in a cultural, political and economic stagnation that is, at least partly, the responsibility of a tired, almost all-male, oft-times corrupt 60s-and-over generation that simply will not move aside and make way for youth.
As of now, only the economic stagnation (the national economy remains sluggish) is statistically verifiable.
In time, notwithstanding instinctive grace and elegance, the other lacunae will become ever more obvious.