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geekhack Community => Off Topic => Topic started by: mljs54 on Fri, 04 April 2014, 11:25:58

Title: Italy vacation
Post by: mljs54 on Fri, 04 April 2014, 11:25:58
I'm going to be travelling to Italy at the end of April for approximately 2 weeks (Rome, Venice, Florence).

Any tips/tricks/advice from someone who has recently been to or lives there?

Much appreciated.
Title: Re: Italy vacation
Post by: iri on Fri, 04 April 2014, 11:28:14
don't try to eat at a restaurant at 3pm.
Title: Re: Italy vacation
Post by: Dubsgalore on Fri, 04 April 2014, 11:32:04
I was in Florence and Venice about a month ago, have fun! hopefully it's a little warmer for you
Title: Re: Italy vacation
Post by: mljs54 on Fri, 04 April 2014, 11:33:49
I was in Florence and Venice about a month ago, have fun! hopefully it's a little warmer for you

Nice and thank you. Any advice based on your recent experience there?
Title: Re: Italy vacation
Post by: Dubsgalore on Fri, 04 April 2014, 11:36:01
I was in Florence and Venice about a month ago, have fun! hopefully it's a little warmer for you

Nice and thank you. Any advice based on your recent experience there?

everything is very expensive, so be careful, especially with drinks, we found ourselves paying $50~ for just drinks at dinner...soft drinks...
Title: Re: Italy vacation
Post by: mljs54 on Fri, 04 April 2014, 11:40:10
I was in Florence and Venice about a month ago, have fun! hopefully it's a little warmer for you

Nice and thank you. Any advice based on your recent experience there?

everything is very expensive, so be careful, especially with drinks, we found ourselves paying $50~ for just drinks at dinner...soft drinks...

I've lived in Manhattan my whole life so hopefully I'll have enough street sense to avoid the tourist traps, but good thing I plan on only drinking water, and of course the table wine which I hear is excellent :)
Title: Re: Italy vacation
Post by: iri on Fri, 04 April 2014, 11:40:48
I was in Florence and Venice about a month ago, have fun! hopefully it's a little warmer for you

Nice and thank you. Any advice based on your recent experience there?

everything is very expensive, so be careful, especially with drinks, we found ourselves paying $50~ for just drinks at dinner...soft drinks...

I've lived in Manhattan my whole life so hopefully I'll have enough street sense to avoid the tourist traps, but good thing I plan on only drinking water, and of course the table wine which I hear is excellent :)
hope you speak italian then
Title: Re: Italy vacation
Post by: baldgye on Fri, 04 April 2014, 11:48:39
Aperitivo
Title: Re: Italy vacation
Post by: Binge on Fri, 04 April 2014, 11:50:15
I'm going to be travelling to Italy at the end of April for approximately 2 weeks (Rome, Venice, Florence).

Any tips/tricks/advice from someone who has recently been to or lives there?

Much appreciated.

Buy the house wines.  Get a GOOD tour guide who will take you off the tourist circuit for food.

If you can get a lesson on haggling.

I went with my Latin teacher and her husband when I was in my teens and that amazing woman had a tour-guide friend who kept it cheap and we learned a lot.  At the time it was also when there were riots in Rome... so some sh!t went down but all in all without such knowledgeable people to guide us I don't think it could have been so eventful.
Title: Re: Italy vacation
Post by: Dubsgalore on Fri, 04 April 2014, 12:11:10
I was in Florence and Venice about a month ago, have fun! hopefully it's a little warmer for you

Nice and thank you. Any advice based on your recent experience there?

yeah one of my family members had lived in florence for 1 year of her life at one point, and was fluent, so we were set

everything is very expensive, so be careful, especially with drinks, we found ourselves paying $50~ for just drinks at dinner...soft drinks...

I've lived in Manhattan my whole life so hopefully I'll have enough street sense to avoid the tourist traps, but good thing I plan on only drinking water, and of course the table wine which I hear is excellent :)
hope you speak italian then
Title: Re: Italy vacation
Post by: CPTBadAss on Fri, 04 April 2014, 12:14:42
If you can get a lesson on haggling.

Pro-Tip: If you can haggle for keyboard stuff on GeekHack, you can haggle in real life. Just put your game face or sunglasses on and pretend you're trying to lower the price on a KMAC. Or the classic IRL haggling move: put your price in a calculator and show the seller.
Title: Re: Italy vacation
Post by: Lanx on Fri, 04 April 2014, 19:19:29
my honeymoon was
venice (6days)
florence (6days)
rome (5days)
positano/alfani/naples(4days)

ask any questions.

the first thing you should worry about is getting a mifi.

don't ride the gondolla, it is literally the ****tiest 100euros you can spend in your life (we did it anyway cuz, ****, it's a honeymoon, still the biggest regret, but it was **** you HAD to do to get it off a checklist)

yelp works pretty well enough, that you get a lot of reviews from tourists

tip a euro per person, they don't expect it anyway, so why bother.

i don't drink but ppl i went with did, local wines were good enough for them, local wines are basically the same price as bottled water

have you played assassins creed? play assassins creed 2/brotherhood it's ****ing awesome to play asscreed... climb the pantheon and then see it in real life!
Title: Re: Italy vacation
Post by: pichu23 on Fri, 04 April 2014, 20:18:05
my honeymoon was
venice (6days)
florence (6days)
rome (5days)
positano/alfani/naples(4days)

ask any questions.

the first thing you should worry about is getting a mifi.

don't ride the gondolla, it is literally the ****tiest 100euros you can spend in your life (we did it anyway cuz, ****, it's a honeymoon, still the biggest regret, but it was **** you HAD to do to get it off a checklist)

yelp works pretty well enough, that you get a lot of reviews from tourists

tip a euro per person, they don't expect it anyway, so why bother.

i don't drink but ppl i went with did, local wines were good enough for them, local wines are basically the same price as bottled water

have you played assassins creed? play assassins creed 2/brotherhood it's ****ing awesome to play asscreed... climb the pantheon and then see it in real life!

100 euros for gondola ?  :'(
holy & i wanted to go on that during the summer break.  :-X
gotta think twice now  :confused:
Title: Re: Italy vacation
Post by: Lanx on Fri, 04 April 2014, 21:46:15
gondola ride is ****, the guys don't sing, and they don't negotiate price b/c every ****ing tourist will want a gondola ride so they'll just wait for the next one. you go around the main waterway for 20mins i think, and that's it.

if you do go on a gondola ride, some gondolas are better than others, some actually have cushion seats some are bare ass wood, check them out b4 you go, they literally just line up on the pier and you pick one and go.

also venice smells disgusting, i've lived in ny half my life, i have friends in staten island (the garbage dump) venice smells worse than that because it's 500 years of water stench! it's not bad on the main water way (where all the tourists are) cuz that's a big body of water, but when you walk on the inner streets and you cross the tiny bridges, that's where the smell is.
Title: Re: Italy vacation
Post by: IvanIvanovich on Fri, 04 April 2014, 23:31:00
**** Venice!!! I would recommend skipping it all together and go to Milan instead! Nasty over priced rotting bog Venice is. It's not charming.
Also I if you can swing the time, I would really advise you to take some time out to go to some of the smaller western coastal Riveara cities/towns instead. Some of them have magnificent beaches and etc. and are quite nice. I would much rather spend time in some of those than in overprice Rome, Venice or Florence. I haven't been in a while, so some may have better deals or local events going on than others that may well be worth checking in to.
Title: Re: Italy vacation
Post by: iri on Sat, 05 April 2014, 02:58:03
tip a euro per person, they don't expect it anyway
, so don't tip.