Day 16- To take the lift or to not take the lift....

One of the things that has baffled me since I have been in this country is how the people stay so thin. I mean all this fabulous food, that is extremely fattening I might add, with very little or no vegetables and the unlimited amounts of expresso and wine of course.... Still even with all the walking around people do here, how is it possible to not be at least an American averaged size person (woman at least) which from the last survey done was an American size 14? Well today I answered the question, we are staying at the top level of what New Yorkers would call a fifth floor walk up. All the buildings here are old, even if they are somewhat modernized they still seem to stick to the same architectural make-up; dark mahogany wood with marble floors, all the lights are on timers and there seem to be antique handles on most doors which have antique keys to match. The most important thing to note here are the elevators or lifts as they are called in Europe. Every lift we have been in is the size of a very small closet, the max capacity is 4 (which I do not see possible nor would I stay inside if a third person entered) or 300 Kilos which is roughly 600 pounds for those who are not privy to the metric system. That would mean no more than four 150lb. people or three 200lb. people can ride the lift together at any given time. My point with all this is that this lift is not only small and made of wood and glass being held by a cable you can see but today it got stuck. Thankfully we were not inside but this made us realize that taking the stairs is probably the best idea from here on out, this also made me realize that locals probably do this everyday.