italianando

Today we’ll be talking about some Italian language vocabulary - what do you say when you're at the airport?... Continue...

Buongiorno bellissima gente, how are you enjoying this summer? Even though I know it’s almost finished.

Today we’ll be talking about some Italian language vocabulary – what do you say when you’re at the airport?

I went to Italy recently to visit my family and things just felt a little different travelling during these strange times. Actually a lot more organised than usual but what you say at an airport surely hasn’t changed, so that’s good news.

Find out the most common expressions you would use when travelling and never struggle again trying to make people understand you. Also listen to the podcast at the top so you know how the words and expressions are pronounced in Italian.

Continua a leggere! Keep reading.

Basic vocabulary

To begin with, let’s go through some Italian words and the vocabulary that you would use when at the airport. See below.

At the airport

Aeroporto. Airport

Aeroplano. Airplane

Entrata. Entrance

Uscita. Exit

Volo. Flight

Biglietto. Ticket

Passaporto. Passport

Numero di volo. Flight number

Bagaglio a mano. Hand luggage

Bagaglio da stiva. Hold luggage

Arrivi. Arrivals

Partenze. Departures

Decollare. To take off

Atterrare. To land

Controlli. Security

Imbarco. Boarding

Carta d’imbarco. Boarding pass

Gate d’imbarco. Boarding gate

During the flight

Assistente di volo. Flight assistant

Posto lato finestrino. Window seat

Posto lato corridoio. Aisle seat

Cintura di sicurezza. Seatbelt

Cabina. Cabin

Passeggeri. Passengers

Are you able to repeat the words after me listening to the podcast? Try! Now that we’ve looked at some vocabulary, let’s dive into some expressions!

Arriving at the airport – Expressions

So, we have gone through some essential vocabulary that will help you understand and express yourself better when you’re at the airport.

Let’s have a look now at some typical Italian phrases.

Dove posso fare il check-in? Where’s the check-in?

Mi scusi, dov’è il check-in per i voli EasyJet? Excuse me, where’s the EasyJet check-in?

Quanti bagagli ha per il check-in? How many bags are you checking in?

Ha il numero della prenotazione? Do you have your booking reference?

Qual è la sua destinazione? Where are you flying to?

Posso vedere i documenti? – Certo, eccoli. Can I see your documents? – Of course, here

Il volo è stato cancellato. The flight was cancelled

Il volo è in orario? Is the flight on time?

Quanto dura il volo? How long is the flight?

Let’s also have a look at some phrases you might hear or use during a flight.

If you’ve ever visited Italy you might have heard about the ''sagre'', local celebrations and festivals that involve food that take place throughout the year, and during the summer they might even take place every weekend... Continue...

Italy is a country rich in traditions that vary from north to south, region to region.

Traditions might be the same but celebrated in different ways depending on the places.

If you’ve ever visited Italy you might have heard about the ”sagre”, local celebrations and festivals that involve food that take place throughout the year, and during the summer they might even take place every weekend.

Every town or village has its own sagre, and every single one of them is different.

They might celebrate food, a local product, a saint or tradition with local specialities. 

But… what is a sagra exactly?

The word sagra (singular) comes from the Latin sacrum which means ”sacred” and there are so many of them, from more famous ones like La Sagra dell’Uva (the sagra of the grape), this as you can probably imagine involves wine and a lot of drinking, to smaller ones typical of their village or town.

Each sagra is dedicated to a local delicacy, ingredient or agricultural activity and always gives a taste of the local life.

For example, a chestnut festival, a potato festival, a sausage festival, a fennel festival and you might also find festivals for local dishes such as pasta e fagioli (pasta with beans) and la polenta. They are celebrated mostly throughout summer during the weekends and they might last one day or more, and it’s all about eating. 

What are the typical features of a sagra?

Although each sagra is different, they all share the same features. Along with food, there’s always some type of entertainment, whether that be live music from some local band, a bigger concert or a funfair.

Whenever you go to one of these sagre you will always find a similar setup. For instance, there will be plenty of benches, tables and chairs where people can sit and enjoy their food and have a chat with a drink.

People usually order their food then go to sit down and enjoy their evening, people dance along with live music and kids run around and play. 

Another feature you might find during these celebrations is a funfair that in Italian we call luna park or le giostre, which in English is ”carousels”.

In Italian, we use giostre to refer to all kinds of fair rides: bumper cars, Ferris wheel, kids roller coaster etc.

Food vans, on the other hand, are an essential feature of a sagra.

Without food, there is no celebration. You will find different ones selling different types of food depending what the festival is about.

To order your dish you usually wait in line and they serve it on a plastic plate, don’t expect anything fancy. When you get your food you can then go to find a table to sit at and enjoy it. Sometimes the queues can get really long, so it’s always better to get in line quite early, or otherwise, the food will finish before you get there. Happened to my dad once lol.

If the sagra happens during the day, most times you will also find a market where people sell local products like organic marmalade, honey,

This is a typical Italian tradition and it's a pre-meal drink and snack between 6 pm and 9 pm. If you walk in an Italian bar around that time you will most definitely see people in groups chatting... Continue...

This is a typical Italian tradition and it’s a pre-meal drink and snack between 6 pm and 9 pm. If you walk in an Italian bar around that time you will most definitely see people in groups chatting and laughing, having a drink and some nibbles, which always come free!!

These type of snacks are called stuzzichini and they can be a variety of things, sometimes you get so many they could be eaten in place of dinner. Can you imagine going to Wetherspoons, ordering a beer and getting free snacks??

Me neither.

Sometimes you might pay an extra small fee for the snacks but usually, you always get a few for free. For example, if you go to some fancy bar in Milan, it would be a lot more expensive than going to someplace in the south of the peninsula, where the snacks would come with the drinks anyway.

The expression we use is fare l’aperitivo (to do an aperitivo) and it’s something that goes far beyond the act of merely drinking or eating a little something.

The tradition was born in 1786 when Antonio Benedetto Carpano, an Italian distiller, invented Vermouth; an aromatized white wine with 30 herbs and spices. The actual expression though was introduced in the first decades of ‘900 with the mass production of Seltz and sodas

Drinks

There is of course a vast selection of drinks and cocktails you can have and we’ll go through the most famous Italian ones, you’ve probably heard of a few yourself too already.

You will never see vino missing during an aperitivo. Vino is wine in English and the most common one during this tradition is Prosecco, which is a type of champagne, usually fizzy.

White, rosé and dry are the ones that are ordered the most but also Marsala, Porto and Sherry. Famous bitters like Campari and Aperol are the most common ones, mixed with some soda. There are also Crodino, Biancosarti, Cynar, Rabarbaro, Spritz.

You have probably heard of the negroni, the most famous classic Italian cocktail (in the photo on the left) or the prosegroni, which is a negroni mixed with prosecco. Of course there are also beers, Peroni and Moretti are the most known ones.

Stuzzichini – the nibbles

We have talked a little bit about drinks, now let’s look into the stuzzichini, the nibbles.

In some places, you get so many of them they could almost replace your main meal. The snacks may vary from north to south, depending on local specialities. If you go for an aperitivo in Milan for example, you might get more fancy snacks likes these below:

Some other places instead would just have crisps, grissini, peanuts and olives. It mostly depends on what the bar has. Sometimes they might have pizzas which they then cut up in smaller slices and serve it as a nibble for an aperitivo. The photo on the left is actually from a local Italian bar in my city, Mama’s Food & Café, they also make the best cappuccino in my opinion.

Other common stuzzichini are pizzette rosse, which are small round pizzas usually with mozzarella and tomato sauce; cornetti salati, mini cornetti usually with a savoury filling, such as salami, tuna, cheese; taralli, these are savoury snacks with a texture a little like breadsticks or pretzels and they are typical of the south of Italy; tramezzini, triangular sandwiches usually with tuna, salmon, ham or tomatoes and cheese; rustici, puff pastry savoury snacks with ricotta and spinach filling, eggs and ham or cheese.

From north to south there are so many stunning places to visit during your stay. Going on holiday in 2020 sounds a little bit tricky I know... But that doesn’t stop me to take you on a digital journey across the country... Continue…

Italy is well known for its beautiful landscapes and beaches. From north to south there are so many stunning places to visit during your stay.

Going on holiday in 2020 sounds a little bit tricky I know…

But that doesn’t stop me to take you on a digital journey across the country and show you some secret beaches that you can add to your list when you next visit! So you can plan your stay.

So… where are these beaches?

You might know about some already… like Amalfi, Positano, Tropea and Salento but there are a lot more places not many people know about, not even Italians themselves sometimes. 

Most beaches are located in the south, in Campania, Puglia, Calabria and Sicilia but there are stunning places in the north too, for example in Liguria.

VernazzaCamogli

Below you can find 5 Italian stunning beaches. Check them out!

1. La Spiaggia del Buondormire

The name of this beach translates to ”The Beach of the Good Sleep”, it’s located in Cilento (photos below), which is in Campania, the same region as Naples. 

This beach is never too crowded and if you enjoy peace and tranquillity this is the perfect place. Maybe that’s why it’s called del Buondormire, you can just go there and have a nap enjoying the sound of nature and the sea.

2. La Bufalara-Sabaudia

This beach is located in Sabaudia, as the name suggests and even in the month of August it’s not very crowded. Sabaudia is a small place in the province of Latina, near Rome.

The name Bufalara instead, comes from the fact that buffalos are seen around quite often and are left free in this beautiful oasis. 

3. La Spiaggia dei 300 Gradini

This other beach is located in Lazio, and the name translates to ”The Beach of the 300 Steps”.

The beach trait is long 1.5km with beautiful turquoise water all along, protected by rocks where trees and green grow. 

Bear in mind that the last 300-400 metres to get to the beach has been destinations for nudists for years, so if you don’t like that practice make sure to avoid that area

We’re back with another coffee blog today! Coffee culture in Italy is so vast there is always a lot to talk about especially if you look at different regions. Everyone has a different coffee tradition. Continue…

We’re back with another coffee blog today! Coffee culture in Italy is so vast there is always a lot to talk about especially if you look at different regions. Everyone has a different coffee tradition.

Today I want to explain what a caffè sospeso is. In English this means ”suspended or pending coffee”; it’s a cup of coffee paid in advance by the person before you as an act of kindness. 

This tradition was born in Naples and there are two theories:

The first one says that is was probably born during the Second World War. A time of great crisis where not everyone could afford an espresso, so people used to pay for an extra one and the barista would give it for free to the next person that asked for one.

According to the second one, when a group of friends used to go to get a coffee together they would get confused about who had a coffee and who hadn’t. So most of the times they would always pay for more coffees that they had consumed, leaving a free one for the next person that came in.

But regardless of how it was born, it has soon become a tradition that expanded all over the country and the world.

It even reached the New York Times where the journalist directly interviewed the owner of the Italian café, Pino di Stasio, that brought the tradition back to life around 2014. The name of the café is Caffè Gambrinus, and if you want to buy a caffè sospeso, you simply buy two and put the receipt in a container that has the shape of a coffee maker, the Moka. 

The writer Luciano de Crescenzo even decided to write a book about this Neapolitan tradition. In his book, he describes it with these words:

Quando un napoletano è felice per qualche ragione, invece di pagare un solo caffè, quello che berrebbe lui, ne paga due, uno per sé e uno per il cliente che viene dopo. È come offrire un caffè al resto del mondo.

The English translation is: ”When a Neapolitan is happy for whatever reason, instead of paying for one coffee, the one that they would drink, they pay for two, one for them and one for the next customer. It’s like offering a coffee to the rest of the world.”

So, what do you say if you want to order a ‘’suspended coffee’’ in Italian? The expression you can use when you are about to order your coffee is:

Vorrei due caffè per favore, uno per me e uno sospeso. I would like two coffees please, one for me and one suspended.

Next time you visit Naples, make sure to make this act of kindness, you never know you might be in need of a coffee.

A presto,

Francesca