Category: italy

What to See and Do in Turin: City of Chocolate and Coffee

On By Laura Ferries WriterIn italyLeave a comment

Turin, or Torino as it is called in Italian, is located in the north of the country as the capital of the region of Piedmont.

Turin is a beautiful and classy location for a winter city break, nestled close enough to the Alps to glimpse stunning snow-covered peaks as you fly into the airport.

Turin is famous for its chocolate, coffee, Juventus football club, and for being the home of Fiat and the location of Alfa Romeo’s headquarters; both Italian automotive icons. Most recently, Turin hosted the Eurovision Song Contest 2022 (and will be passing the baton on to my home city of Liverpool in 2023!). Nutella was created in the nearby town of Alba too!

Before Italy’s unification in 1848, Turin was the capital of the Duchy of Savoy, of the Kingdom of Sardinia under the rulership of the Duchy of Savoy (despite being so far away!) and notably the first capital of the Kingdom of Italy after unification. This rich history means that Turin is the third economic city of Italy after Milan and Rome.

We arrived in Turin from Manchester on the 17th December and it was very cold but a dry sort of cold that is actually really refreshing. I bought a pair of gloves as soon as we arrived but I am a fan of cold places, having loved previous trips to Iceland, Stockholm, Finland and Estonia. I’m a January baby from the north of England after all.

A cold Italian city is a lovely place to visit round Christmas and Turin certainly looked festive and cosy at all turns. Italy does sun-soaked beach days well and it likewise does twinkly Christmas very well too, strings of fairylights and candlelight for everywhere the eye can see.

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What to See and Do in Arezzo: The Italian City of Marble and Gold

On By Laura Ferries WriterIn italyLeave a comment

I’m finally getting round to writing this over three months after visiting Italy as work and life take over!

We’ve just booked flights to Italy again for Christmas where we will be seeing Turin and Pisa (flying into the former and out from the latter 8 days later) so it felt opportune to write about Arezzo before I come back from this next trip and have more to write about!

We were on our third day in Tusany, after visiting Montepulciano, when we decided to visit Arezzo- a small city in eastern Tuscany- on a day of torrential, horizontally-slanted rain.

It was August and still warm enough for vest and shorts but the rain came down cold and we spent a good portion of the day running out of the rain and into shelter. Conveniently, the city is lined with numerous porticoes where we could wait it out before digging back in to see the sights while we could.

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How to Sound Natural When Speaking Italian: 25 Useful Expressions

On By Laura Ferries WriterIn italian, italy5 Comments

I have been learning Italian for just over two years now and after five trips to the country and living with a native Italian speaker, I am happy to have made decent progress. I sat a GCSE in Italian in May/June of this year with a colleague; we met up once a week to revise and we did a fair amount of past papers and Zooms with a tutor and other exercises which lead to us both achieving a grade 9 (the highest grade at GCSE now, higher than the old A* I have to add!).

I don’t get much time to study intensively as my job consumes so much time and I have my poetry, social life, family etc, but it is good to maintain as much exposure to the language as possible to keep it ticking over. I still remember a tip a woman gave me when I first set out on my language learning journey which was to keep it in your life in some small way every single day. Even when you can’t actively sit and study, playing music, looking at an Instagram page or Whatsapping someone in your target language.

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Montepulciano: A Medieval Wine Town in Tuscany

On By Laura Ferries WriterIn italy, Tuscany2 Comments

Montepulciano.

Prior to this trip to Tuscany, I had only ever associated it with the cheaper-end red wine found on the lower shelves in Tesco, one I long overlooked and definitely wasn’t giving the respect it is due.

Montepulciano is a quaint and lovely hilltop town located in southern Tuscany, in the verdant Siena province.

We were visiting the Tuscany and Umbria regions of Italy for five days and had driven down from Ravenna which took just over two hours.

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Rimini & Ravenna on the North-East Coast of Italy

On By Laura Ferries WriterIn italy, ravenna, rimini5 Comments

Rimini and Ravenna are located in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, which is in the centre-north of the country. This is a region very much celebrated for its food (like all of the regions of Italy) such as Ragù sauce and Parmiggiano Reggiano cheese.

This was my third time in Ravenna but my first time in Rimini; a place I had long heard about but knew nothing about.

Rimini is a seaside town located on the north-east coast of Italy, on the Adriatic sea. Cross some miles of sea and you will reach Croatia, just to give you an idea of whereabouts it is located.

Rimini is usually most popular with Russian tourists, to the extent that some signs and menus come in Italian and Russian, however that is not the case at the moment due to Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine.

My partner was presenting in Rimini at SciVac, the Italian committee for veterinary surgeons of small animals, and I was fortunate enough to be off work for the May half term to go with him. As he was giving two presentations, they paid for two nights for us in the Grand Hotel Rimini.

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