Everyone else seems to be starting question/answer threads so i thought i might as well start one about Italy.....Australia is already taken

I am Australian but my mother is italian and i have travelled to Italy a few times. Last year i decided to go to Italy to do an italian language course. I went to Bologna, found an apartment and started Italian school five days a week. I lived in Bologna for three months, and also travelled to other parts of Italy on weekends.

I'm going back to Italy again in August and i will be living there for about two months. I can speak italian fairly well now but i have forgotton a lot of vocabulary since last year. I would say that i am semi-fluent but i definitely need to go back for some practice.





Ask me anything about Italy and i will do my very best to answer. Vai!

I will be going to Italy for about 12 days this summer. Where should I go? I am looking for sites to visit during the day and good nightlife.

Is Milan worth going? Right now, I'm planning to go to Florence, Rome, and Venice.

For a 12 day trip, i would recommend spending the majority of your time in the cities you have already mentioned: Rome, Venice and Florence. They are all amazing, beautiful cities that offer something different. 3 days in each is probably OK. If the trip was a little bit longer i would highly recommend going south to see Naples, Pompeii and the Amalfi coast, but since you are only going to be there for 12 days i don't think you would have enough time to fit them in.

As well as the three cities already mentioned, you could include some day-trips to nearby cities on your itinerary. I think the following places are worth a visit:

* Cinque Terre - stunning coastline and villages
* Bologna - food capital of Italy, some great sites, Ducatti factory
* Modena/Maranello - Ferrari factory
* Pisa - leaning tower of Pisa
* Milan
* Rimini - beach resort town, hotspot for nightlife in summer with lots of beach clubs
* Siena - if you are in Italy on July 2 / August 16, make sure you head to Siena for the Palio di Siena, an amazing medieval horse race that takes place right in the centre of the city


Milan is worth going for a day trip, but I wouldn't recommend any longer than that. It is more of a business/industrial centre and it certainly isn't one of the more visually attractive cities in Italy. The main tourist attractions in Milan are fairly close together and you could easily seem in a day. There are definitely some cool things to see like the impressive Duomo (cathedral), La Scala (opera house) and Da Vinci's Last Supper, but i thought Milan was not as nice as other places in Italy.

hey ajrees, im aussie too, from manly sydney.
anyways, after i finish snowboarding in canada at the end of this year/early next year, i am going to do the backpacking/travel/poker thing in europe and definately want to hit italy.
a few questions.
is it as expensive as they say it is?
do you know much about the snowfields for snowboarding/mountainous areas for hiking?
are drugs easy to come by?
is prostitution legal?

hahaha funnily enough my dad is canadian and i've been to Canada 12 times. You can ask me about that too if you want

Italy can be expensive, but no more so than London, Paris, Amsterdam and other parts of western europe. Hostels are usually around €17-25 per night (AU$30-40). Alcohol is much cheaper than Oz and you can buy it from supermarkets. You can get a bottle of red wine for about AU$3-$4, a bottle of vodka for about AU$12 or a longneck of good european beer for about $2.(Peroni, Stella Artois etc). Groceries are fairly similar in price to Australia, its when you start eating out a lot and drinking in bars/clubs that you will start feeling the squeeze. Beers usually cost around $8 in a pub and thats just for a schooner. Some pubs serve pints for a similar price or slightly more, depends which city.

Trains are the best way to get around Italy imo. Local trains (ie trips less than an hour) are usually pretty cheap. Intercity trains and Eurostar trains that travel between major cities usually cost around €10 per hour travelled (so a 3 hour trip is approximately €30). However, everything is fairly close in Italy so you usually wouldn't be on a train for more than a couple of hours anyway.

Sorry, that's one thing i don't really know much about. Check out http://skisnowboardeurope.com/ItalyI...talyintro.html

Hard to say since i didn't really go looking for them. I think you would probably need to know someone local or a friendly expat. When i was living in Bologna, hash was extremely easy to get (hippies offered to sell me some in the main park every day) but weed was very hard to find.

LOL.

The Merlin Law of 1958 decriminalized prostitution if it is practiced privately, forbids prostitution in brothels, and criminalizes those who exploit prostitutes or lead women into prostitution, including foreign women (ie pimps). Street prostitution is quite common and it is legal, as far as i know.

I'd like to know more on your language school. It sounds like something I'd like to do next year, being a traveling poker pro.. I've never been to Italy but have a good amount of Italian blood (family heritage is south Switzerland which is basically Italian from what my Dad says.)

1) How was the school? How much?
2) How was it getting around speaking english while you learned?
3) Did you meet a lot of young people, have a social circle, etc?
4) How are the women?
5) Internet?

Thanks.

Yeah, the southern part of Switzerland is pretty much Italian. I went to Lugano for the weekend (awesome place btw) and it was pretty much all italian-speaking.

(1) The language school was awesome. Seriously one of the best things i have ever done in my life. The school was located in an old palazzo right in the centre of the city. I had classes five days a week from 9am-12:30pm, with a 15 minute break in between at 11am. Some of my friends had classes starting in the afternoon, but they were for a more advanced level. The entire class is conducted in italian and english/other languages are pretty much forbidden. It takes a little while to get used to this but i found it to be a superior way to learn the language. All of the teachers were excellent and the whole course was very professional. I was there for ten weeks and the total cost was approximately €1500. Not cheap, but worth every cent.

(2) It was a little bit challenging for the first week or so, but after that i didn't really have many problems. Italian is one of the simplest european languages to pick up and a few simple phrases will get you by. Una birra, per favore, grazie, parla inglese? vorrei..... (I would like.....) etc are easy enough to learn. The language school organised an apartment for me with a great landlord called Tony who spoke english the day before i started classes so that made things easier. Bologna is not as touristy as places like Rome or Florence so english is less widely spoken. However, people at the Vodafone shop, my taxi-driver etc spoke some english so it was OK.

(3) I met lots of young people through the school, flatmates, friend's flatmates etc so i had an excellent social circle while i was there. Going to class five days a week with people in a foreign city, you quickly make friends and find some people to hang out with. I made lots of great friends from Sweden, Germany, England, Switzerland, Brazil and even some aussies through the school. Most of the students are girls, and hot. I also met a few italian friends who i still keep in contact with, including my old flatmate Giordano who i will be staying with again when i go back this year.

(4) Un****ingbelievable. Italian women are amazing. All of them look like they stepped straight out of the pages of a fashion magazine. Dark hair and dark eyes = for me. Sexiest women in the world IMO

(5) Readily available. The school had 5 computers with free internet but not really a place where you can sit 8-tabling Pokerstars all day. The main town square in Bologna had a free wireless hotspot so i always saw lots of people with their laptops surfing the net. The main mobile networks in Italy (3, Vodafone, Wind, Tim) have some good deals on wireless internet, that would probably be the best way to go.

Did Italy deserve to progress against Australia at the 2006 World Cup?

Well damn, I am pretty psyched about going to Italy now!

Thanks for the response, if I have any more Q's I'll let you know.

Not a chance.

Cheating bastards!

Yeah, is the italian speaking region of Switzerland. I live in Lugano, it's just about one hour away from Milan.

Other spots that could deserve a visit is:
Pompei which is the city that was destroyed by the Vesuvio eruption 2000 years ago
Sardinia scenery is also really nice, as it is the Amalfi coast. For not coast scenery, I would suggest Toscana entroterra, you can see here some beautiful pics: http://www.agriturismolacasaccina.it...mo_toscana.htm

OP: Been to Matera? The Sassi and envrions are probably the best sight in Italy that no one has ever heard of. Northern Italy gets most of the love, but the south rocks. IMO the food is better, the people friendlier, and the scenery magnificent.

http://www.transitionsabroad.com/pub...ra_italy.shtml

Wow, that looks amazing! Unfortunately i have never been there. I have been to southern italy though. My mum is calabrese, so i've travelled quite a bit through campania, calabria, sicily and the aeolian islands.

I hear a lot about there being a big north / south divide in Italy, ie the northerners look down on the southerners as being poorer/less educated. Is this true?

Yes, it is certainly true to an extent. There are a lot of historical reasons for the disparity between the north and the south - industrialisation, education, crime, political divides etc. The italians actually have a term for southern italy = il mezzogiorno which basically means the 'sunny south' and is often associated with the mafia, poverty, illiteracy and crime. Mezzogiorno is also the italian word for midday, but anyways......

A lot of people from the north look down on southerns and regard them as untrustworthy. People from the south generally have much darker skin and darker features due to the mediterranean climate, so they are also easily distinguishable from northerners.

When I was in Milano and Biella I saw a lot of graffiti including several swastikas...did you see a lot of similar stuff?

I never saw any Swastikas but i did notice a fair bit of graffiti in many italian cities. That just reminds me, i saw some funny graffiti telling southerners to **** off in Florence.......

Italy is definitly awesome imo
Backpacked in italy for 6weeks or so last summer and im back in florance now for a total of 2months, the plan to learn italian is kinda falling through but having an awesome time anyway here with friends that are studying in florance.

If I would do it again, I think i might be interested in one of those language school things but I think it would be impossible to combine with playing poker. right now I hardly get in any hands at all.

Had some cool pictures but I got to find a new cable to get them from my camera because I forgot the original one at home.

If your going to Venice make sure to check out the Paradiso Perduto that Bar is by far the best place if you into Jazz.

are there any italian casinos where you can count cards in blackjack? is it worth it?

Don't know about this but you can definitely find a 3 card monte game at numerous autostrade fueling stations.

Will do. That's a kickass name for a bar - "Paradise Lost". A little strange though, "perduto" is a really oldschool italian word that is never used anymore. Perso is the modern equivalent.

The more appropriate translation is "Lost paradise".

I'm looking for places to stay in Venice, and there aren't too many options on the island itself. Is staying on the island that much better? How is bussing to and from the island?

Thanks

For sure on the Island as Venice is best at night when all tourists are gone, if your on a budget http://hotels.lonelyplanet.com/hotel...n-P121773.html is nice in particular the area around the hotel.

The Campo Santa Margarita were the Hotel is located is a real laid back place to chill during the day, the Rosso wich is located at the campo invites you to drink a few sprizz and a look at the female erasmus students.