God bless those Germans!

Probably..........maybe if I went to a local D&G boutique I could have fit in with all the teenagers?

:rolleyes:

Ummmm... quote, unquote "while dining in THEIR country." It's THEIR country - even if there's no AC & no ice, it's still not acceptable to wear shorts. Period. Don't embarrass the rest of us who accept it's THEIR country and conform to local traditions. That's why we travel. If we want to wear shorts we can stay home & dine at MacDonald's.

OP's original question: "In most restaurants in Italy is it acceptable/allowable to wear shorts to dinner?"

For the purpose of their trip, the answer that would have benefited the OP the most is "Yes" since the OP reports back that they were able to wear shorts every night to dinner and never had a problem. If it wasn't acceptable/allowable, they would have told to take their tourist Euro's elsewhere and eat dinner at a gelato stand.
If you want to argue that it's a cultural faux pas, well that's a different story.


acceptable (http://www.askoxford.com/dictionaries/)
• adjective 1 able to be accepted. 2 adequate, though not outstanding or perfect.

Stop being so dramatic. As if you can speak intelligently of the dress code in EVERY restaurant in Italy, and in particular all the resturants I have been to.:rolleyes:

The country isn't as fashion-minded as you think it is.

The question is, where do you want to go to for dinner?

Ristaurante
Trattoria
Osteria
Macelleria
Self service
...

And which location?!

Exactly!

Obviously, you wouldn't wear shorts to ANY Ristorante.......as you wouldn't at almost any Trattoria in a major city. Outside the major cities......eh, hit or miss.

What about a Osteria? I went to a Osteria in Tuscany (about 5km from Siena) which was in a town about 50 yards long. The menu was fixed, extremely high end to the point where lunch would cost you $100/couple. Dinner was an easy $200. No shorts there. I went to another one in Florence with indoor/outdoor seating. I was wearing long pants (It was in Florence, after all), but the rest of the customers of all nationalities (Including Italian) were wearing all kinds of short, casual clothing. I ordered a beer served in what looking like a large plastic candy dish, which is something I didn't think I would see outside of a US college town. Good times.

Sorry for the drama on two glasses of wine ;) But we just got back from over 2 weeks (usually try to go every year), this time on the Amalfi Coast (I admit, shorts were worn during lunch at beach restaurants), Rome, Umbria, Tuscany and Venice, eating at all different types of restaurants, from the most humble to 2*, and I honestly don't remember ever seeing any at dinners.