RSS
Showing posts with label vacation in italy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vacation in italy. Show all posts

Being Safe From Pickpockets in Your Italy Vacation

Labels: , , , , , , , , , ,

A wonderful Italy vacation is not just all on enjoying the thrills and taking delight with visiting the attractions. Safety ought to be the tourist's highest priority. Rome is one of the top cities in the country where millions flock all year round for their vacation to Italy. Despite the massive volume of crowds in the big city, safety is not a concern. It is since offences are seldom noted in Rome. News about little boys stealing a car could even be aired in national news as it doesn't regularly happen. In general, Rome isn't just a romantic place but a secure spot for an Italy vacation package; you can wander around anytime and anywhere with no worrying about your protection.

A concern though is purse snatching. Much like some other hot vacation getaways, Rome is one "hot" spot for bag pick pocketing that is actually widespread in virtually all key tourist vacation destinations. Pickpockets are generally rarely locals or Italians but foreigners. Although, many foreigners are sincere; there remain those who choose towards the bad. An identified section where purse pick pocketing is rampant is "the wallet express" - bus 64. Most of public transportation automobile stations are on the list of these "bad guys". A number of travel agencies orient their tourists on Italy vacation packages on how to be safe in these places.

Considering the number of vacationer who take Rome each year for their Italy vacation package, the ratio of purse pick pocket to the quantity of guests is significantly approximately the same as another major traveler destinations in Europe. A lot of the "bad guys" are highly trained in doing this harmful job.

Your holiday in Italy, particularly in Rome is usually a secure one. Just do not forget that protection begins with yourself. Also it is always best to be conscious of your belongings, be composed and try never to travel alone.

Read User's Comments(0)
Posted by Selena Jateli

Learn Italian | 10 Easy Ways To Instantly Learn Italian

Labels: , , , , , , , , , ,

Learning Italian is a fantastic opportunity. Speak Italian with people you meet while traveling, as well as those in your community. Communication opens doors to: work abroad, expand your business, expand a curiosity to full blown Italian fluency, discover your roots, find romance, a chance travel, and most importantly - expand your communication.

1. The Godfather Would Approve

Rent Italian classics. As Italian movie director Federico Fellini said, "A different language is a different vision of life". With all these reasons and more, in the following are a few ideas on how to incorporate learning Italian into your daily life.

Some great internationally successful flicks are: "La doce vita", "The Garden of the Finzi Contini", "Ladri di Biciclette" (Bicycle Thieves) and movies from the Taviani Brothers, Visconti, Antonioni and Fellini.

2. Go on a Mental Adventure

Head to your local library or bookstore and pick up a couple Italian books. Reading is essential to learning how language structure works. Check out travel guides, novels, and other books that describe Italy, to enrich the learning process. Learning more about the culture is a great motivating factor. Not only are you learning Italian, but also you're immersing yourself in a new culture and understanding a people.

3. TV Time

Watch TV. Yes, in the name of education, turn on your TV and veg out for a few hours; just make sure they're speaking in Italian. With all the choices of satellite and cable channels we have no excuse not to find programming in different languages. Just listening to the programs, the Italian will begin to subconsciously sneak into your brain . Soon you'll be sputtering out Italian in your sleep. If you don't find any programming you really dig, there is the option to rent popular TV shows in Italian versions. This way you'll still be able to enjoy your favorite programs and learn at the same time.

4. Italian Itinerary

Search out Italian music online, in your local music store, or library. Inside the liner, the lyrics of the songs should be included. Skim the words along with the music, and try to figure out what they're saying. Shortly you'll be singing along and perfecting the lofty vowels of the Italian language in minutes.

5. Have Fun

Learning a foreign language doesn't have to be a snore. You can easily spice it up by incorporating some of your favorite games and activities. Try playing Italian bingo, Italian family feud, Italian crosswords, basically anything that helps you learn vocabulary and forces you to practice Italian.

6. Creative Renaissance

Fuel your ingenious side and learn creatively. Create your own Michelangelo and label his body parts in Italian, draw a house and label all the rooms and furniture, post up your artwork where you can see it – on the refrigerator, your bathroom mirror, on the dashboard of your car.

7. Self Teach

Try the Pimsleur Approach if you're just starting. Pimsleur is great for beginners to learn Italian. This program doesn't ask you to memorize lists of vocabulary or grammar. Basically, it teaches you the same way you learned your first language —audibly. Listen to the CDs in the car or on your lunch break. Repeat the phrases and soon you'll be speaking like a native.

8. Phrase Your Words Wisely

Express yourself by learning phrases in Italian. One big mistake beginners make is trying to learn everything at once. According to the Pareto principle, 20 percent of the input contributes to 80 percent of the output.

9. Explore Your City

Get online, check your local bulletin boards, and visit community centers to find out about Italian programs. Find Italian speaking residents in your community and join a conversation group or learn more about heritage societies. Speaking a new language helps you understand another culture and its people. Language and culture are interwoven; in many ways, language defines our reality. By learning Italian you are opening your mind to new ideas and ways of seeing the world.

10. Vacation in Italy

Wander the bella vineyards of Italy on a picturesque wine tour. Everything will be more enjoyable if you can understand Italian. Speaking their language illustrates a respect for Italian culture. In almost every country, people prefer it when tourists at least make an effort to speak their native tongue, even if it's just Per favore (Please) or Grazie (thank you)!

The fastest way to learn Italian is to be immersed. When you visit Italy, not only will you enjoy delicious food and beautiful sights, but you'll also absorb the Italian language so naturally you won't even notice it.Learning Italian is like learning a new way to think. You must immerse yourself into the culture; learn to speak and write a different way from your native tongue. Fall in love with the language. If you love the Italian language then everything will come easily to you.

Read User's Comments(0)
Posted by Selena Jateli

Choosing Your Best Travel Destination

Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Mostly, travelers go on a trip recommended by friends, but is this what they really want? It's never too early to plan for your trip and to do what your heart really desires. Here are several questions to ask yourself before starting to plan your vacation. Do I want to relax? Do I want adventure or a learning experience? Do I want to get away from my job? Once you know the answers to these questions, then you are ready to plan your trip.

Vacations are needed for our emotional, physical and mental balance. Vacations give a person a chance to relax, renew his energy, and free him from his daily routine. Vacations can be far away or close to home. Wherever the vacation may be, it does the same thing. It provides satisfaction, which is far more important than the destination itself. Generally, there are some different types of travel according to the activities involved. Here are some of them:

1. Responsible Travel. Traveling doesn't always have to be self-serving. With responsible travel, one could have enjoyment as much as respecting the local environment and the people.

2. Rediscovering nature. Rediscovering travel is all about nature and everything in it. It revitalizes the soul while experiencing everything there is to know about nature.

3. Tribal cultures. In today's world of high technology, it is wise to experience the simpler life of the tribal people who have lived close to nature in the same way for thousands of years.

4. Responsible Diving. Diving not only lets travelers appreciate what is in the sea but also helps make the traveler more aware of efforts concerning conservation of our natural resources.

Plan your travel to a country that will leave a great mark in your traveling diary. Here are some of the most popular destinations today:

1. Thailand. Thailand is also known as Siam. It is an Asian country bounded by Burma, Laos, Cambodia, and Malaysia. Behind the back draft of Thailand's jungles of bamboo, rubber trees and vines are the Five-star hotels of modern conveniences. In some parts of the country, elephants are still being use to lift timbers and buffalos are still being used in farming.

2. China. China is now the second largest country and fastest growing economy in the world. Most parts of China are still unexplored by tourists; however, the eastern portion is now popular to western tourists. First class hotels now offer the highest class of amenities and dozens more are still being built.

3. Italy. Italy is a boot-like shape country bounded by Switzerland, Austria, France, and Slovenia. The main attraction of Italy is St. Peter's Square where the Pope resides.

4. Caribbean. Caribbean is an archipelago of islands, 2000 square miles across. Most of the islands are plateaus and eruptions of underlying mountain systems. It has nice beaches of crushed coral and white or pink sand and the water at the shore is a deep blue.

The success of any vacation will not depend on how much money the traveler spent or the destination. The final outcome will depend on the degree of enjoyment experienced by the traveler.

Read User's Comments(0)
Posted by Selena Jateli

How To Experience Local Family Life On Your Trip In Italy

Labels: , , , , , , , , , ,

Today on vacations in Italy, travelers want to experience real, local life in a meaningful ways with families, to visit their homes, share pieces of their lives, learn new things and even make new friends. Four ways to get to know locals are cooking with families in their homes, taking a course and renting a room in a local home, staying at a farm B & B, and dining with families in their homes through Home Food.

1. Take a cooking class or cooking school tour with a family in their home kitchen

Here's an example of a delicious cooking school in Bologna, Italy's gastronomic capital.

For your cooking week you live in an independent apartment in the medieval centre, next door to your host family's home, so you live like a local and have local friends nearby. With the mother and daughter, both excellent home cooks, you cook full menu dinners hands on for about three hours in three lessons in their kitchen. Then you gather around the dining table to eat your creations with the father, sons and your two cooking teachers, sharing laughter and good conversation. You soon feel part of the family!

Your cooking teacher tours you around Bologna's food market, telling you about local food treasures like parmesan cheese and buying ingredients for your lesson. Your week also includes a Bologna city tour and a day trip to Florence or Venice where a local guide shows you the sights. You can also enjoy a one day experience with market visit, cooking class and lunch.

2. Take a course and ask for home stay accommodation

In 1996 I took a month long Italian language course in Rome and asked the language school to get me a room with a family where nobody spoke English. They matched me up with Lucia, a 45 year old high school art teacher, architect and single mother of two kids, aged 8 and 16 in their apartment near the Vatican. At first Lucia was surprised to see a woman her age arrive, not the usual 22 year old student. We discovered we had a lot in common, had many long conversations in her kitchen and became friends. For 12 years, I've visited Lucia, shared many meals around tables with her friends and taken trips to Naples and her country home in Le Marche with them. Take a course, stay with a local family in your favourite Italian city! You never know what lovely surprises may come out of the experience!

3. Stay on at a farm B & B or apartment where the owners live on the property

If you're renting a car to explore the Italian countryside, stay in agriturismos (farm B&Bs or apartments). Many agriturismo owners make wine and olive oil. You may want to help pick grapes or olives at harvest time! To make sure you meet the owners, confirm they live on the property so you'll get to know them.

For example, in southern Tuscany about nine km south of Montalcino, Agriturismo Podere La Fonte offers two small suites in the country with marvelous views of Val d'Orcia. The organic property full of exotic plants and trees, birds and a chemical free swimming pool, has many olive trees. Owner Alberto makes olive oil the traditional way using the big granite wheel. Friendly, joyful Alberto and his wife make your breakfast and can make dinner for you. Alberto is a fantastic cook and gives cooking lessons too.

4. Eat traditional dishes with families in homes all over Italy through Home Food

Imagine yourself arriving at 8:30 p.m. at a family's home in Venice. The mother, Mercedes, whom you don't know, welcomes you warmly to share a dinner of traditional Venetian dishes she's just cooked for you. You join her and up to five food loving tourists you may not know around her table through the Home Food organization. You savour dry cod with polenta (a dish from the 1500s), risotto with radicchio from Treviso, sardines with saor (fried onions, wine, vinegar, pine nuts, raisins) that fishermen in the 14th century made, vegetables in oil and pincia, a soft cake of bread soaked in milk with raisins and apple.

As you eat and drink local wines, you learn about Venetian culinary traditions and history and get to know a local family as well as fellow food lovers. Home Food started in Bologna in 2004 and spread to 14 regions in Italy. Its mission is to preserve traditional recipes and food traditions handed down from mothers to daughters and to share these dishes and local food culture with food lovers.

About 100 women throughout Italy, all excellent home cooks with a wealth of food knowledge, enthusiastically open their homes for scheduled dinners for small groups. Visit the Home Food website to know more and register for dinners. Have fun cooking, speaking Italian, picking grapes or olives and dining with Italian families at their homes! You'll experience genuine Italian life as an insider friend and soon feel Italian!

Read User's Comments(0)
Posted by Selena Jateli
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)