New Shoes!! ITALIAN shoes!

28 July 2011

The Comedia students didn’t have class this afternoon, so some friends and I walked into town to explore and so I could find some better shoes for our hike in Casentino tomorrow. My boots just won’t cut it; I know this.

We first just walked around. Then we went to some shoe places and each of them were in the 200 euro range! Phew! And these were on sale! Can’t do that. I barely even buy $50 shoes; that would be much too much. So we kept walking, and eventually we found a place that had on sale walking shoes, and one of the girls pointed out they had Tom’s. Tom’s shoes, for those of you who don’t know, are fairly well-made shoes that are produced by a company that sends a pair of shoes to a child in a third-world country every time a pair of their shoes are sold. Nice, right? I’ve always wanted a pair, even before I knew about the ‘one for one’ deal. But I was unsure whether or not they would hold for a hike. I did find some really cool high-top converse-esque tennis shoes that had bold jewel-toned colors. No one was helping me so I picked up one of each shoe to bring to the host to get me a pair of each in my size. Immediately, the man grabs them from me and says, “No. Upstairs.” So, the girls and I were like, okay and walked upstairs. After a long time of trying to figure out exactly what size shoe I am – this particular store did it by American numbered sizes – I liked the Tom’s. But they continually refused to let me try on the tennis shoes because they were men’s.

We went downstairs to show them I also wanted to try to other shoes before I finalized my decision on the 60 euro Tom’s, and held up the tennis shoe to show which one and they said no again. So after the fourth or fifth no, the other girls told me we should keep looking. I wasn’t sure we would find anything because I had already been to three stores. No one had my size in the kind of shoe I was looking for. Apparently, they only carry certain sizes of each shoe at any given time, and they only go as high as 41, which is about a 10.5 in women’s. But most of the stores I looked at only had up to 36. I found out I am a 39. Go figure.

But eventually, we looked in one last store and they had walking shoes on sale for 71 euro and they are cute and comfortable! and I bought them, of course!

DSCN7678 (The internet is slow and is not letting me add my picture.)

They’re called Geox Respira. On the box is a picture of the sole of a shoe, breathing. Apropos since the shoe is specially made for the respiration of the feet that are wearing them. Along with the shoes came a little pamphlet with information about the shoe. Apparently, our body’s sweat allows our body to thermoregulate; so the body cools down as the sweat evaporates. And the foot sole is one of the parts of the body with the greatest concentration of “sudoriferous glands,” which means our feet produce up to 100 litres of sweat a year! Rubber soles cause condensation on the sole which causes that wet feeling, like you have a plastic bag wrapped around your foot and the sweat just keeps filling it.

Well, with the Respira, there are perforated rubber soles which have microporous membranes that absorb and expel sweat. So this means, not only will I have totally fashionable shoes, not only will I have comfortable feet, I will also have very cool and non-sweaty feet! Woot! Okay, now I know why they were so expensive. (Big tip, Mom: Don’t try to figure out the conversion; I know I won’t.)