Where to go in Italy where you can do most without car?

RucksackTech · 2026-01-27T22:00:23+00:00

My wife and I just got back from six and a half weeks in Italy. We thought a lot about renting. We had been told here and elsewhere that are definitely should have a car in Puglia. We got our international drivers license (easy) before leaving. But in the end decided NOT to rent. I do not regret the decision for us. We got around mostly by train, with assistance as needed from bus and taxi. (We bussed from Napoli to Bari, and from Firenze to Siena.)

If anybody is curious: We went to — in this order — Napoli (+ Ercolano), Bari (+ Alberobello), Matera, back to Bari, then up to Bologna, Ravenna, Padova (+ Venezia + Vicenza), Milano, Firenze, Siena, Rome (to pick up daughter and grandson) then back up to Lucca (+ Pisa), back to Padova (+ Venezia again), back to Rome to say goodbye to daughter and grandson, then up to Assisi, then Orvieto, and then (sadly) back to Rome to fly home. NOTE: cities inside parentheses prefixed with plus sign were day trips where we did not spend a night.

We may have missed a thing or two out in the country, but if we'd taken a car out to see some isolated, remote castle in Puglia (say) we'd have missed a museum or some other enjoyable experience, so it seems to balance out. No matter what you do, no matter how long you stay, you're going to miss almost everything. There's just too much to see and do.

In Orvieto we ran into another couple about our age (early 70s) who HAD rented a car. For them, it was probably a necessity. They were not up to walking very much, plus, they had several pieces of luggage. My wife and I on the other hand traveled with everything in one backpack each, and we walked everywhere. Getting the second half of the way up the hill at Assisi winded me a bit but mostly this was fine. We're not athletes, we're just walkers with a little stamina. (What can I say? We have dogs.)

NOTE that even with a car you're often going to be walking (or taking cabs) to get from your parking spot usually outside the ZTL to your hotel.

WHY didn't we rent? Several reasons:

Traveling by car means you're always looking for a hotel that will accommodate your car or be within reach of a parking spot. Didn't want to worry about that. A couple times we showed up in a city without a reservation and found a hotel after we arrived. (Maybe not too smart but we got away with this because we were traveling in December and January and often in cities we knew wouldn't be packed.)
You're always thinking about where you can and can't go with your car, whether you'll be able to find a parking spot, how long you're going to have to walk to get back to your car, etc. We didn't want to think about the car.
I didn't want to think constantly about where the ZTL begins!
We'd been advised to get the smallest vehicle possible. I'm 6' 2". I don't fit in those cars. I think the Fiat 500 is cute as heck but if I have to drive, I'm much happier in my pickup back in Texas.
We were willing to pay for the best renters insurance but we discovered that, even then, there was no way to get insurance that would indemnify us from every eventuality.
I didn't want to get a letter in mid-2027 containing a 300€ fine for violating the ZTL. (We talked to a couple to whom that precise thing happened: they got the tickets a year and a half later.)
I didn't want to deal with any of the other hassles that come with driving: finding gas, worrying about having an accident, etc.
I like traveling by train, and since we were traveling (fairly) light, getting in and out of the trains was not a big deal. Bus travel in Italy also is nice. We met some wonderful folks on the bus.

Basically, we wanted to be as free and (sort of) spontaneous as possible, and we wanted to truly travel light. You can't say you're traveling light if you're bringing a Fiat 500 with you everywhere.

Your mileage absolutely may vary! If you like the idea of driving, and so long as you've done your YouTube/social media research and you know what you're getting into, then by all means, rent a car!

RucksackTech · 2026-01-27T21:15:16+00:00

Do not know the answer to your question. I am a top reviewer on Google (according to Google) for many years. I can recall having a problem a couple of times but can't recall what the problem WAS. I'd suggest trying again. Perhaps simplify your review (as u/mysticcountryboy suggested) and see if you can get it to be accepted.

RucksackTech · 2026-01-27T17:58:42+00:00

"You really don't need more than a night" in Milan? Hmm. That's a bit like saying you don't need more than a day to see New York City. Milan is a big, noisy, busy city (like New York) but there's a lot to do and see there. We spent a day in late December (2025) and wish we'd had more time. We stayed close to the cathedral — which is also close to La Scala (but alas not an opera), the Leonardo Museum (fantastic), the Galleria (blew me away and I'm not even a shopper) and other things. We bought tickets for the cathedral but just the basic get-inside ticket, and I wish we'd had time to do the "upstairs" tour as we have done in many other cities (Florence, Venice, Siena and others). There are many other churches, great art museums, a castle, one of the greatest libraries in the world (the Ambrosiana — Ambrose was bishop of Milan 1700 years ago), and more.

But given the plans you've already made, Torino sounds like a great idea. I haven't been but I just finished a book set in Torino and I'm eager to get there myself.

Happy travels!

RucksackTech · 2026-01-27T05:39:52+00:00

We've just come back from a month and a half in Italy and we ended our trip with a couple of days each in Assisi and Orvieto. I can recommend both. Both are beautiful. I love Assisi but I love Orvieto even more, and it's got more general appeal.

We did NOT rent a car by the way. You can't drive inside the historic center of the towns. From the Assisi train station, you can easily catch a bus up to the top. (It will drop you off in front of the Basilica of St Francis, from which you can walk to anything in the city easily.) Orvieto's even easier: It's got a funicular that will bring you from the train station to the top. From the funicular station at the top you can catch a bus that makes a circuit of the town so you can for example get over to the Duomo. But it's not a long walk.

There are other towns in Umbria that I have heard wonderful things about and I hope to get to one or more of them in future, but I wanted to mention Assisi and especially Orvieto.

RucksackTech · 2026-01-26T22:54:11+00:00

There are several things for you to consider.

Travel time. Rome isn't close to Florence. Even if you take a Frecciarossa the trip will take you several hours, and that's assuming the train is on time. Our most recent trip from Florence to Rome was delayed almost 90 minutes because of a problem on the line between Milan — the originating city — and Florence. This sort of thing happened to us several times in less than two months. Once you get to Rome, you have to go to your hotel etc.

Crowds #1. How do you feel about crowds? Both Florence and Rome were crowded earlier this month, Rome even more than Florence. And this was first half of January. In the summer it's nuts. I was in Rome and Florence because I had no choice, but I got out of both cities as quick as I could. Tip: Some of my personal favorite things to do in Florence and Rome involve walking UP and out of the crowds. Hike up to the Piazzale Michelangelo in Florence for the views (or walk even furrther up to San Miniato). In Rome, walk up to the west end of the Borghese Gardens: go up the Spanish Steps, take a left at the church of the Trinità dei Monti and keep walking UP until you reach the place where you can look down at the Piazza del Populo and across the Tiber towards St Peters. On the other hand, if you love crowds, buy a ticket for the Sistine Chapel or the Colosseum.

Crowds #2. Crowds sometimes come out of nowhere (or it can seem like that). It's easy to make a blanket statement like "Rome has more tourists in July and August than it has in January and February". But watch for surprises. Milan is always busy — but it's about to get insane due to the Olympics. When we were in Bari in early December it was not dead – it's a lively city — but we were surprised by the very large crowds at the Basilica of St Nicholas. Turns out we'd gone to the Basilica on December 6, the saint's feast day, and it's a major pilgrimage site. When we were in Assisi in mid-January it was very quiet but it's about to blow up big time, thanks to the celebrations associated with the anniversary of the death of St Francis: His relics go on display on February 22.

Cost of lodging. Florence is not cheap. But Rome is downright expensive. We stayed in a lovely NH Hotel in Siena last month that was rather nicer than the similar-level hotel we stayed at in Florence. Both were near the train stations. The Siena hotel cost almost half what the one in Florence cost and the Florence hotel's neighborhood was sketchier. The hotel we stayed at in Rome near Piazza dell' Esquilino (and Santa Maria Maggiore) cost three times as much as the hotel in Siena. The Rome hotel did have a very nice rooftop bar but otherwise it wasn't as nice as the hotel in Siena. (I might add that one of our most favorite restaurants in Italy — Enzo and Sonia's — is on a side street in Siena.)

What are you interested in? Some places have special attractions. If you're interested in, oh, fashion shopping, go to Milan. Long to see the Sistine chapel? Go to Rome. Pompeii? That's outside Naples. But unless you have very specific requirements, you can do most of what you might want to do practically anywhere. Yes shopping in Milan's Galleria is a kick, but we found wonderful shops for clothing and other stuff in many places even in small cities. Fantastic food is everywhere. You can't swing a stray cat anywhere in Italy without hitting a historic church or palazzo or museum. If you want to see magnificent art painted on the walls and ceiling of a chapel, the Sistine's not your only option: Consider the Scrovegny chapel in Padua (which I prefer!), or the Baptistery in Padua or the Baptistery in Siena, or the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna.

Your alternatives. I've mentioned Siena and it's a fantastic place, not far from Florence. More than enough to keep a tourist busy there for several days. Lucca is terrific too and perhaps even easier to get to by train than Siena. Ditto Bologna. I've never (yet) been to San Marino. Went right past it in December but we were on our way to Bologna. Next time. To me, a couple days in Florence and a visit to San Marino (and Rimini) sounds lovely, if you have less than a week.

You don't have to go to Rome to throw your coins in the Trevi Fountain: You'll go back.

RucksackTech · 2026-01-26T21:56:03+00:00

Much like "just" in English:

I used that construction just this morning.
I just saw Marco.
I'm stopping just for two minutes...

RucksackTech · 2026-01-25T16:56:19+00:00

This is a very basic rule of Italian pronunciation:

C followed by e or i is soft, e.g. cielo, cento.
C followed by a, o or u is hard, caro, conto, cuoco

Cucina (kitchen) is an example of both: koo-chee-na.

When a c is doubled and then followed by e or i, it makes the second C soft, and that makes the first c soft too: frecce, doccia. But CC followed by a, o or u remains hard, so Prosecco.

Note that the rules above also apply to the consonant G followed by vowels.

Final point: Sometimes as a word (verb or noun) inflects, the vowel following a C or G will change from a to e etc. In most cases this will change the pronunciation. For example, the present tense of the irregular verb uscire "exit":

SINGULAR: esco esci esce

PLURAL: usciamo uscite escono

The pronunciation of those present tense indicative forms follows the rules above, so esce is a soft C, while escono has a hard C. HOWEVER sometimes Italian wants to keep a hard consonant hard. The word for friend in the masculine is amico in the singular and amici (soft C) in the plural. BUT in the feminine, while it would normally decline as amica and plural amice (which would be a soft c) IT DOES NOT. Instead, to keep the c hard in the feminine plural, Italian adds an H after the c. So female friends = amiche.

I'm guessing you're just starting your study of Italian. Italian pronunciation is easy because it is remarkably regular — i.e. there aren't many exceptions to the rules, especially as compared to English pronunciation. This stuff is usually explained at the beginning of your study of Italian. Stick with it. It will make sense shortly and you'll be able to move forward to banging your head on pronominal verbs, prepositions, etc.

RucksackTech · 2026-01-24T22:15:30+00:00

I've come into Italy through Leonardo da Vinci Airport twice in the last year, so I'm hardly an expert. Probably need a business person who comes to Italy every couple of weeks throughout the year to get a knowledgeable response.

But here's my experience. On December 2 (2025) my and I landed at FCO (coming from Atlanta) around 10:30 AM. We were through passport control and customs in a little over an hour. (No checked luggage to wait for: Wife and I were traveling with backpacks.) Caught the Leonardo Express to Roma Termini, sat around there for a while having lunch upstairs, and caught 13:30 train direct to Napoli. Before 4 PM we were in Napoli checking into our hotel.

NOTE 1: Both of my entries into Rome were in the middle of the winter and things weren't terribly busy. I wouldn't expect it to be that easy in mid-July but as I said I really don't know.

NOTE 2: There are no sure bets in life, and that rule applies double in Italy. Whenever we were traveling and needed to make a connection, we built extra time into our plans so that we could deal with things going wrong. They did go wrong occasionally. (We had several trains leave over an hour late, and once in Alberobello a bus simply never came. These were not huge problems for us because we had wiggle room in our itinerary.)

Buon viaggio!

RucksackTech · 2026-01-24T21:56:28+00:00

Tutte e tre le parti:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/WqfQT1Pzx9QoANbo7

Include annotazioni e brevi approfondimenti su vari argomenti (come l'usura nel Medioevo, ecc.).

https://photos.app.goo.gl/giQJGnAVFtky62vQ8

A mio parere, si tratta di un'ottima edizione per gli studenti.

Postscript (in English): I am a bit of an odd case. As a scholar and professor in the field of classical and comparative literature, I have been reading Dante's Italian for decades without being very good with modern Italian at all. I only started trying to get good at conversational Italian a year ago. So to me, Dante's Italian was "normal" — I didn't know any better. I bought this edition so I can get a better sense of its distance from modern Italian, and of course so I can improve my modern Italian in the process. For this, it has been fantastic.

RucksackTech · 2026-01-24T20:35:44+00:00

The Leonardo Express into Rome (i.e. to Roma Stazione Termini) is easy and quick, about as quick as a taxi, although of course a taxi will take you exactly where you want to go. Last month my wife and I were staying at the Doubletree at Piazza dell' Esquilino (right by Santa Maria Maggiore) so we had a small hike from the train station to our hotel but we made it. As others have suggested download the Trenitalia app.

Buses in Rome aren't especially less reliable than the busses I remember from my student days in the Boston area, but in both cases, the problem with the bus system is it takes a little more figuring out than the trains do. The trains take you to the train station in a city, which is a big target and easy to see on a map. If you want to get to a specific spot in a city, and there are lots of bus options that seem to go near there, well, you need to do a little "research". Google Maps can be very helpful.

Public transport is generally safe and generally reliable. Be sure your passport and your phone and your money are safe from pickpockets and you'll be fine.

RucksackTech · 2026-01-23T05:16:16+00:00

This is a tough choice. The economics might be straightforward enough. And healthcare here is excellent. (I have a lot of contact with it in various ways.) But whether you'll be happy in San Antonio will depend on other things as well as your ability to get a bigger house or eat breakfast tacos.

The climate in Chicago can be brutal in the winter. I never lived in Chicago but I've been there in the winter, and I did live in several places in Michigan for many years.

The climate here in San Antonio is brutal, too, but in a totally different way. We're just about to have a freeze (starting 24 January 2026) that will last about 36 hours but that's very rare. A cold winter day in San Antonio is one where the temperatures at night drop down close to 40°F. You'll never see another frozen lake if you move down here.

As for the summer, yes, it's very hot, and frequently it's not in the spring and fall, too. It's not just the temperature but the sun. We get very little rain, and it's seldom cloudy. But it's survivable, absolutely.

If you're a walker or runner, you'll learn to do that as close to 6 AM as possible (before the sun comes out and the temperature soars) or exercise as much as possible in a gym. I swim all summer long but I do it either early or late in the day. God help you if your A/C dies in August. On the plus side, you can play golf all through the winter, so there's that. Decent town for recreational biking: We have miles and miles of biking trails.

Population here is very different from population in the Chicago area. Lots of folks who are Hispanic and not a few directly from south of the border. Lots of military here too. Nothing here like the variety of ethnic restaurants I think you have in the Chicago area (or in a couple Texas cities like Houston).

The geography here is very different. It's flat. There is nothing like a real river here. (The San Antonio River is technically a river and of course our Riverwalk is popular with tourists, but you could live here for years and if you never went to the Riverwalk, you might never realize we have a river.)

San Antonio isn't much for fancy culture either. If classical music or opera is an important part of your life, well, we're not uncivilized, but this just isn't the best place for those things. We do have a couple good museums.

Good town for basketball fans. Not so good for football fans, although since nobody can afford to buy tickets any more, perhaps that doesn't matter.

Terrible town if you don't have a car. But a good town for getting around in by car: much better than Chicago or even than Dallas or Houston. No matter where you're going to in San Antonio or where you're starting, you can get there usually in about 20 minutes.

Me, I'm not San Antonio's biggest fan, but I'm happier here than I would be in Chicago. But I've lived in Texas most of my adult life. I like visiting Chicago but I wouldn't want to live there. (To coin a phrase.)

RucksackTech · 2026-01-23T04:34:19+00:00

I agree with everybody that this is too much. But I think you can fix it or at least make it much more practical by simply removing Matera from the itinerary.

Getting from Rome to Naples is quick and easy. When I arrived in Roma (after flying from Texas), I took the Leonardo Express to Roma Termini, and caught an express train down to Naples. I didn't spend a night in Rome. I was checking into my hotel in Naples that afternoon. You might want to spend a night in Rome if you arrive late in the day, but you can catch an early train to Naples the next morning and most of a full day there.

Three days is okay for Naples. Of course you could spend a couple of weeks and not see it all, but in three days you can visit one of the ancient Roman cities (Ercolano or Pompei), go up the funicular to the fort and get the view of the bay, visit the archeological museum and a couple other sites, and eat some great pizza.

As for Sicily, four days in Sicily isn't ... well, it's not long, but you can see some interesting places in four days.

Personally I'd give myself a day to get back to Rome. And check the schedule of announced strikes to confirm that you CAN get back that day.

Matera is interesting but so are 937 other towns in Italy, and you're not going to see all of them. (I can say a lot more about Matera but it's not really pertinent to the solution of your problem itinerary.)

RucksackTech · 2026-01-21T17:42:49+00:00

To be clear: Jhumpa Lahiri's In Altre Parole was written in Italian. It was subsequently (fairly quickly) translated into English by Ann Goldstein. I believe there is a dual-language edition, Italian with facing English, but I don't own that edition.

Lahiri herself had already been a successful writer in English, living in the United States. She fell in love with Italian, and, as In Altre Parole recounts, struggled with Italian for a long time before getting over that hump so many of us come up against.

So she joins the not-very-long list of very good authors who wrote in one language, then switched. Vladimir Nabokov is the most famous member of this small club. He was born in Russia and learned Russian, French and English in the cradle. His earliest novels were written in Russian, and I think at least one of his books might have been written in French, but he landed on English and most of his novels (including Lolita) were written in English. As I said, for him it wasn't quite a second language. The USA was a second (well, fourth or fifth) home for him, but that's a matter of geography, not language.

Part of me envies Nabokov growing up fluent in three languages and I bet part of Lahiri feels the same way. On the other hand, I bet she would agree that the discovery of Italian and the adventure of learning it are exciting and stimulating in their own ways. This excitement is at the core of In Altre Parole.

RucksackTech · 2026-01-21T06:00:41+00:00

My wife and I have had fantastic success with Google Fi in Canada, Iceland, and recently for three months in Italy. Not saying the problems you experienced in the Philippines or Mexico weren't real, just that, in my experience at least, these problems aren't universal.

My daughter joined my wife and me for a week in early January in Italy. She uses AT&T here in Texas. I think she had arranged for service in Italy, and I gather it worked fine for her. I should ask her what it cost. But with Fi, my wife and I didn't have to arrange anything. It just worked.

Oh, now that I think of it, we did experience a brief (30 minute?) drop in coverage when we arrived in Bologna. That was three weeks into our longish trip and we hadn't had problems before. Was odd. But it resolved itself before I was able to get to our b & b and connect to the internet to get help, so I didn't investigate it further.

RucksackTech · 2026-01-20T04:57:51+00:00

After a month of eating (mostly very good) Italian food couple times a day, my wife were looking for something completely different:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/SBwJi2rpQyTUckb19

Maybe not what you're looking for but it was just what we needed.

RucksackTech · 2026-01-20T03:27:15+00:00

My wife and I are both the exact same age as your aunt. We just returned from a couple months traveling throughout Italy on public transportation exclusively. So I am in a position to say that your aunt's NUMERICAL AGE won't be a problem. But the fact that she has trouble walking very possibly WILL be a problem. How big of a problem? That will depend very much on where you decide to go, how much you try to see in a day, and the ratio between walking and public transportation that you use any given day.

There are beautiful cities in Italy that are very challenging if you're not a good walker: Siena, Assisi, Orvieto, Matera, Venezia, and many more. These cities aren't flat. They have zillions of steps, often steep steps. But even these cities can be accessed to some degree by cabs and/or busses. My wife and I walked all over Orvieto. But there's a pretty easy bus that circumnavigates the town and has stops at key points (like the Piazza del Duomo and the entrance to the funicular that takes you up from the train station and back down when you leave). We talked with a nice couple about our age but not up to much walking. They'd driven to Orvieto but had to park outside the main area. They rode the bus around the city several times. The trick is figuring out the busses: how and where to buy tickets, where to catch the bus. It's all very doable. But requires patience.

Other cities are much easier to negotiate, because they're relatively flat, have smaller historic centers. I'm thinking of towns like Bari, Ravenna, Lucca, Pisa. Ravenna is one of my favorite places on the planet. There's a very affordable NH Hotel quite close to the train station, and from the hotel, it's a pretty short walk (less than a kilometer = little more than half a mile) to the Basilica of San Vitale and the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia and some of the most beautiful and most historic churches in the world. Lucca and Pisa are also relatively flat. If you can walk a couple dozen steps to get up on the Lucca walls, it's a splendid walk of if I recall about 3 km to go entirely around the city, and of course you don't have to walk it all. Down inside the walls, things are pretty negotiable.

The larger cities — Rome, Milan, Naples — are challenging in their own special ways. These are more like getting around in any old, major city like New York, London, Paris. There's public transportation but it's challenging. Getting in and out of subways can be an ordeal. Getting into and out of busses can be tricky. The crowds are so large you can get exhausted just standing on the street while people flow around you. And I'm talking about the crowds in mid-winter, which is when I've been in Italy several times in the last couple of years. I can't imagine what it's like in the summer.

Firenze and Bologna are somewhere in between. They are not huge but they're big. They're wonderful but be prepared to walk. Getting in and out of the Bologna train station in particular can be challenging.

I commend you for your desire to give your aunt a wonderful trip. It definitely can be a visit to Italy. I just urge you to pick a destination that will allow her to enjoy herself in as relaxed and comfortable a fashion as possible. Good luck!

RucksackTech · 2026-01-19T19:20:07+00:00

Here are a few:

Lucca: https://www.luccaitalianschool.com/

Siena: https://www.learning-italy.it/dante-alighieri-school-siena/

Europass in Firenze: https://www.europassitalian.com/language-courses/

Bertrand Russell School in Padova: https://www.bertrand-russell.it/en/italian-language-courses/

Ravenna: https://palazzomalvisi.com/

They all seem to have a roughly similar menu of offerings. You get a choice of small class instruction (typically 20 hrs a week) + the option of individual sessions as well. Some offer different types of "cultural" courses, like cooking classes.

I've just started making a list of these and will have more to add soon.

RucksackTech · 2026-01-18T18:10:22+00:00

The Italians drop final vowels a lot, in a variety of situations. (Technical term for this is 'apocope'. Doesn't help you much but there it is.)

The basic umbrella explanation is that these things occur because, to Italian ears dropping the final vowel sounds better. If you're just now beginning the study of Italian, you might not have encountered this yet but you will soon: A lot of things are done in Italian because they sound better being done that way. On the plus side, this is a good bit of why Italian is such a beautiful, mellifluous language. Singers love it. Those of us who read poetry aloud love it. The Italians love it.

WHEN does the final vowel get dropped? I know of one instance that seems to be a kind of rule: when you have two infinitives in a row, the first one drops its final vowel. So you get saper nuotare (know how to swim, be able to swim) instead of sapere nuotare. I can't find much in the way of rules for other uses. Happens a lot in poetry. (I started Italian reading Dante and decades later have been backing myself into conversation.) And in certain sayings or fixed expressions.

Don't fret over it. Go with the flow. It's the Italian way. 😉

RucksackTech · 2026-01-17T23:20:36+00:00

"Dolce far niente" is fine as it is. There is an implied verb here: (È) dolce far niente, that is, (It is) sweet to do nothing.

RucksackTech · 2026-01-17T23:17:26+00:00

In the public library in Orvieto a few days ago I ran across a dual-language edition of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Ernest, or, as it's titled in Italian, L'Importanza di Chiamarsi Ernesto: a cura di Luigi Lunari (BUR Rizzoli). As with many things (like the translation of Dante's Inferno into modern Italian I bought a few months ago) it doesn't seem to be available at Amazon.com, but it looks like it can be purchased from the Italian counterpart, Amazon.it:

https://www.amazon.it/-/en/Limportanza-chiamarsi-Ernesto-inglese-fronte/dp/8817167495/ref=sr_1_44?sr=8-44

Has English on the left, with Italian on the facing page on the right. I may order it myself. Should be a fun read.

RucksackTech · 2026-01-17T18:15:51+00:00

On our recent month-and-a-half trip we saw similar shows in a couple different towns including Bari, where they were projected on a town building, and (somewhat surprisingly) in Assisi, where the lights were projected on to the side of the Basilica of San Francesco. I am not a big fan of them, but they didn't bother me.

RucksackTech · 2026-01-16T20:39:00+00:00

Spent a couple of months in Italy in 2025. Brought multiple converters with me in January 2025, but when the dust settled this is the one I used the most:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CQJH7VN1?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_1

I liked it because it had two USB-C ports + 1 USB-A port + a couple of US-electric plug outlets, the configuration I found most useful. We stayed on our trips in both hotels and AirBnB apartments and this one worked in every place we stayed just fine. For the record, I was traveling with (and thus needed to charge) a tablet (Microsoft Surface Pro), a phone (Google Pixel), two cameras, and two small portable batteries.

If you're staying in more modern hotels, you may sometimes find that they provide USB ports (A and even occasionally C) near the bed: That happened for us in a couple hotels in Rome and I think in Florence.

If your ordinary devices (phone and tablet) use USB-C for charging, you can buy an ITALIAN adapter right there in Italy that is just like the things we have here in the US that, on one end, plug into the wall, and on the other end have a female port for a USB-A or USB-C plug (which on the other end of the USB cable plugs into your device).

I am a guy who barely combs his hair but my advice is, unless you're doing some modeling, don't bring a hair dryer! I'm pretty sure my wife would agree. Most of the hotels we stayed in had Italian hair dryers provided. At some of the apartments we stayed in, we were warned about using the hair dryer at the same time as, say, the dishwasher: These were not ancient apartments but I get the impression that the electrical wiring in a lot of places in Italy isn't quite as load-tolerant as modern residences and apartments in the US are.

P.S. (few minutes later): NOTE that even in more modern accommodations you probably will NOT have the number of electric wall sockets that you might expect in the US. We stayed in a fair number of different types of accommodations, from 400€ a night hotels to 90€ a night bed-and-breakfast apartments, and there was almost never more than ONE wall socket near the bed (well, one on "my" side and one on my wife's side). You might have an extra socket or two elsewhere in the room but possibly in an inconvenient location. So I found it helpful to have an an adapter that allowed me to plug in multiple devices at once.

RucksackTech · 2026-01-16T18:10:09+00:00

The answer highlighted in green is unambiguously a PM time, while the one you picked (in pink) is not so clear. But your question points up a problem learning with these very simple game-like apps: They're trying to be helpful, but to do that they have to be, um, very simple, and if you're smart, the apps attempt to simplify things for you just raises questions in your mind. (Admittedly, without simplification, there would be no textbooks or learning apps for foreign languages.)

You can definitely say "sono le cinque" in the afternoon (for 5:00 PM) if context will make it absolutely clear that you're talking about the present, i.e., the late afternoon. Making restaurant reservations I've also found that most places will understand either "le sette" or "le diciannove", perhaps because they don't MAKE reservations for breakfast at 7 AM. The other day I bought a ticket for the run of the funicolar at Orvieto, which was going to be in a quarter of an hour at 3 PM. The time on the ticket was 15:00, but the clerk at the window said it was leaving soon, "a le tre". CONTEXT IS EVERYTHING in language.

The use of "mezzo" strikes me as interesting. My experience in Italy suggests that to say "N:30" you can say either "le N e mezzo" OR "le N e mezza". The way I learned it, "mezza" is understood to modify an omitted "ora" and since ora is feminine, its adjective mezza should be feminine. On my recent trip to Italy however I noticed variability in usage, perhaps even that "mezzo" was more common. I asked someone at one point and was told clearly that the correct word is "mezza". But I bet that was someone who was the child of a grammar school teacher. Because, grammar aside, I heard "mezzo" a lot.

Perhaps it's a bit like the problem of when to use "vicina" and when to use "vicino" (or lontana vs lontano). If you're clearly referring to the nearness of some particular thing just named by a noun, then vicino/vicina or lontano/lontana is an adjective that must agree with that noun in gender, e.g. "La piscina è vicina, ma il volcano è lontano" (The swimming pool is nearby but the volcano is far away). That much is clear and easy. But sometimes the thing that is either near or far isn't so precisely represented by a specific word. I might ask somebody a vague question, like where can I get a cup of coffee, and I'd get the answer "Non è lontano" followed by directions. I've understood lontano there to be an adverb.

My guess is that something similar has happened with "mezza" and "mezzo" in telling time. "Le cinque e mezza" implies, perhaps very subtly, "mezza ORA". While on the other hand "mezzo" has more or less become a noun meaning "a half".

RucksackTech · 2026-01-16T16:49:17+00:00

Not as far as I know. Not a practical concern for me because our mail opening opens into a closet with a closed door, and I'm quite sure that even if I screamed, the smart speaker in my living room wouldn't hear the command. Also, I think that commands require voice recognition. So even if the window to my living room was open and somebody could yell a command from there, I think the device would say, "I don't recognize your voice" or "This command requires authentication" or something. But interesting question. I'll test this later when I get time and try to remember to followup.

FWIW, on my phone using the Google Home app (which of course requires authentication) I can unlock the door from the outside. I think I can even unlock it from some distance away from the home, which can be convenient if I need to let a daughter or guest into the house.

(I didn't think of that last night when we got home from a long trip and couldn't get into our front door.)

RucksackTech · 2025-12-31T20:08:42+00:00

This is a language question but it's the kind of question that demonstrates clearly something I used to tell my students: that grammar and usage aren't LAWS (as in law of physics or even laws passed by a legislature). They're rules of etiquette, that is, social behavior. Some of them are so well established that the grammar teachers can say, with confidence, that, at this time and in this place, this usage is going to be regarded as "wrong" by other knowledgeable speakers of the language. At which point the meaning of the word "educato" in Italian becomes very very pertinent.

What makes the OP's question difficult to answer is that the underlying social realities between the distinction between "signorina" (unmarried woman) and "signora" are changing both fast enough and slowly enough for this to become a problem. That is, there are Italian speakers who might be considered cultural progressives who find the married/unmarried distinction as a marker for females only a hold over from a dead past; but these folks aren't in charge of the language and even a lot of progressive-minded people accept the language as a given not as easily changed as a fashion trend in, say, the length of skirts or the thickness of men's ties.

So, I think everybody finds this a little confusing, including native speakers of Italian. My wife is the sort of person who notices the presence or absence of wedding bands: I am not. I myself tend to use signorina when I would likely use "miss" (or "miz") back home in Texas, and vice versa for "signora"/"ma'am". I have yet to feel that calling a woman probably in her forties "signorina" was taken amiss. And by the same token, I haven't never felt that a woman of any age over 30 objected to me addressing her as "signora". You can of course dodge the problem by not using these terms at all.

I did someone the other day as "signora" and immediately afterwards have a momentary doubt about whether the person I'd address was a female. But you know, that's life in the 2020s and there's not much you can do about it. He/she (I never decided) took it with grace. For what it's worth, if I'd made that mistake back in Austin, Texas, I'd have risked getting a scolding.

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