subject: Italy - An Overview for Travelers [print this page] Italy - An Overview for Travelers
Ah, this is only the beginning of the interesting things travelers should know before going to Italy.
Since Italy is known for its delicious food, let's take a stroll down pasta, bread, and pizza lane. Italian farms produce many different goods including grapes (all that fabulous wine), potatoes (bet you didn't know that), sugar beets, soybeans, grains, olives, beef, and dairy. Of course, some of the best truffles in the world can also be found in Italy - and let's not forget pizza.
Napoli (Naples), towards the south of Italy, is credited with inventing that warm and crusty treat Americans love. The Napoli version of pizza comes topped with fresh spice, chopped tomatoes, fresh cheese, and a super thin (not crispy) crust. Italians also happen to love their bread, and anything that comes out of nonna's oven is a true delight (maybe that's why Italians consume half a pound of bread per day!). Italy is known for things other than food, like the ice cream cones (wait, that qualifies as food, doesn't it?). Still, that cold summer treat that we all love comes from the land of superb dairy. Now, on to those non-food items (promise) ...
Italy has contributed a lot to the world with inventions such as the barometer, electric battery, nitroglycerin, and wireless telegraphy. Then again, none of these Italian inventions would be any fun without mentioning those people that really put Italy on the map - Christopher Columbus, Marco Polo, John Cabot, and Amerigo Vespucci (to name a few). What about all those Italian-Americans, where did they come from?
The majority of Italian-Americans hail from Italy's southern regions (Napoli, Sicily), though some of them also come from the North. You won't find too many Italian-Americans that come from Tuscany - who would want to leave Tuscany? - though the Tuscany region is responsible for the modern Italian that is spoken today.
So, just how much pasta does the average Italian consume? Italians weigh in at a whopping 60 pounds of pasta per year - that is a lot of ravioli, spaghetti, and linguini!
Aazdak Alisimo writes about italian language schools for ItalianLanguageCourseSchools.com.
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