Some Italian news for your Sunday reading pleasure:
Now I’m really disappointed - that nun beauty contest the Italian priest was trying to run online has been canceled. He says he was getting lots of flak for it. Umm, what did he expect?
Pizza chefs in Naples handed out free pizzas to protest what they consider pizza prices that are too high.
Chinese ice cream eaters are apparently enjoying an Italian-influenced flavor - parmigiano.
Remember when I mentioned that Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi’s CD of Neapolitan love songs might not come out by Christmas because …
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Semifreddo and gelato are all well and good, but for serious chilling out, Sicilians have another trick up their sleeves - granita! Unlike the icy-confection found elsewhere, Sicilian granita’s intensely pure, crystalline texture is far more divine than anything found off-island.
Other Italian cities tout granita, but typically their goods are sad imitations of the real deal. To begin with, granita in Sicily is not a beverage. It is served in a glass or something akin to an ice cream sundae dish with a spoon, not a straw. There are absolutely no artificial syrups. Fruit flavors are flavored with actual fruit, such as limone (lemon), fragole (strawberries), pesca (peach), and gelsi (mulberries). The tastes are seasonal and in reputable bars you won’t be served mulberry granita until the mulberry tree bears her fruit. However, fresh fruit flavors aren’t the only contenders. Other island favorites include caffé (coffee), mandorla (almond), pistacchio (pistachio), and in Catania, cioccolato (chocolate).
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If you thought the Roman Catholic church was so last century, there is a priest in Italy who’d like to change your mind. And he’s got a creative (I’d call it very outside-the-box) scheme to try to attract new followers. He’s calling it the “Sister Italy” contest, and it’s a beauty contest for nuns.
Yes, you read that right - a beauty contest for nuns.
Father Antonio Rungi says he feels like nuns get a bad rap for being thought of as “straitlaced and funereal.” It’s an unfortunate image, he thinks, given that “there are nuns from Africa and Latin America who …
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Some Italian news for your Sunday reading pleasure:
An Italian court has ruled that teachers are not allowed to spit at principals. Good, I’m glad we cleared that up.
Here’s another article about one reporter’s Home Food experience (remember my Home Food dinner in Milan?). I’d love to do another one.
So, just in case you were wondering, you’re not allowed to build sandcastles on the beach in Italy.
As if there aren’t enough trendy shops in Italy, Abercrombie & Fitch now says it’s going to open two stores in Milan next year.
With the …
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Here’s another of my Italy Q&A posts. Trudy left this question in a comment right here on the Italy Logue:
What is the easiest way to get from Milan Malpensa to Varenna at Lake Como? Friends are arriving earlier than we are and my husband is the driver. They would like to go to Varenna vs. waiting for our flight to arrive 5 hours later in the day?
Y’know, Trudy, I think your friends are smart to want to get the heck out of Malpensa Airport and to Varenna rather than waiting for you and your husband! I mean, as far as airports go it’s just fine… But really, Malpensa vs. Varenna? No contest. So - let’s get your friends out there without a car.
What I’d recommend is that your friends take the Malpensa Express Bus from the airport to the Milano Stazione Centrale (central station), and then hop on a train from there to Varenna. I generally prefer the Malpensa Express train to get into the city, but it doesn’t go to the Stazione Centrale - so even if there’s traffic to deal with on a bus vs. a train, it’s nicer to only have to worry about one transfer instead of two.
So, here are the details for your friends:
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I know not everyone who loves Italy loves Italian soccer (heck, not even all Italians love Italian soccer), but I happen to love both - and I’m really looking forward to the new Serie A season starting up on August 31 (even if my team last season didn’t leave me too optimistic about how things will go this season). I recently posted a primer on how to read an Italian soccer schedule, and I thought I’d take this opportunity to highlight a new feature on a sister site - travel information for Italian soccer stadiums. Because after all, once you figure out when your team is playing, you need to know how to get there to see the game!
You may remember me mentioning the soccer blog The Offside before here on the Italy Travel Guide; well, they’ve recently added a new - and very cool - feature over there where you can look up travel information either by team or by stadium to find out more about where a team plays, where the stadium is in relation to the city, what the nearest airport is, some directions on how to get there, and even some hotels and hostels to check out that are close to the stadium. It’s a fantastic addition, especially for people who are just passing through a city but may want to catch a soccer game while they’re in town.
This list of team travel information and stadium travel information (the pages are different, and it’s worth it to check both) is good for the 2008-2009 Serie A season.
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If you’re not interested in paying the high prices for hotels, then chances are good you’re looking at staying in a hostel. Well, if you’re looking for hostels in Florence, here are reviews of the Florence hostels I’ve either stayed in or visited personally. The links go to the detailed posts I’ve done, including photographs, so you can get an idea about which of these hostels in Florence is best for your trip.
Academy Hostel
Emerald Fields
Emerald Palace
Locanda Daniel
Ostello Archi Rossi
Santa Monaca Hostel
Here are a few other Florence hostels you can choose from (I haven’t …
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I’ve gotten quite a few questions recently about the best ways to get to and from Milan’s Malpensa Airport, and since I’ve already talked about the very-fabulous Malpensa Express train, I figured I should cover more bases and talk this time about the various Malpensa Airport buses. There are a few bus companies that serve the airport, and a few cities that have direct lines to and from Malpensa, so you’ve got a few choices.
According to the Malpensa website, the airport is connected by bus with Milan, Turin, Lugano, Chiasso, Genoa, Novara, Como, Lago Maggiore, Domodossola, Gallarate, Castelnovate, Brescia, Bergamo, Bologna and Verona (among other cities which are intermediate stops). The timetables listed on the website are only for the routes from Malpensa to these various cities, so you’ll have to contact the bus companies for more details about getting from any of these cities to Malpensa - you can either call them, check their websites (not all of them have websites, however) or just make a point of going to the bus terminal in advance of your expected trip so you can find out more information.
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There used to be a time that October in Italy was the start of the slow season, when prices dropped as the bulk of the tourists fled. In Italy’s bigger tourist cities, however, those days are a thing of the past. While April and October can still rightfully be called the “shoulder seasons,” you shouldn’t hear that and assume that both months will be relatively quiet - because you’ll be in for a rude awakening when you arrive and find the crowds still there.
To be fair, there are (generally speaking) fewer crowds in Italy in October than you will in June or July, but more people are catching on that the weather in Italy is still pretty doggone good (if not always reliably consistent) throughout most of the country in October, and the prices for things like hotels are starting to trend downwards then, and you’re more likely to find cheap flights as well. So it’s the perfect blend of decent weather and decent prices. Which is, of course, why it’s getting more popular to visit Italy in October.
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Summer’s coming to an end, which means there are all kinds of fall travel deals coming out right now. And with projections way down for tourist numbers in Italy this summer, no doubt the folks in the Italian tourist industry will be hoping to make up some of that lost revenue in this shoulder season. I’ve been seeing lots of Italy deals come across my radar screen lately, and I’ve been posting them as I find them on a sister site, Cheap Travel Scout. Here are a couple of the deals I’ve written about recently:
9-Night Air/Hotel 3-City Italy …
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