We don’t speak Italian…

Hello fellow budget hunters

I’m sorry for the delay in posts and erratic schedule but travelling around Europe has caused strain on WiFi and my tablet. In fact the latter is currently not switching on.. Italy was too much for it!

Anyway, since we don’t speak Italian, this is the first country we’ve had more than our fair share of mishaps and hilarious moments. I wanted to share some of the funniest with you from Rome.

The funny evening

We’d seen this flyer for a place nearby that did a menu of the day. We thought it was interesting. Like most Italian restaurant the menu changes daily and the waiter told us the choices were just salad with things on.

We decided to just order some coffees and eat somewhere else as you can get salad everywhere but not true Italian pizza and pasta!

Coffee

Only I got a macchiato which was very milky and my boyfriend ordered some Latte. He was thinking about how a latte is a long drink in the UK. The man asked my boyfriend if he wanted it hot or cold and he said hot. Turns out he ordered just hot milk !! The translation of Latte is just milk and we sat there laughing until we cried at him drinking his hot milk like a child who can’t sleep! (After that we stuck to cappuccino and espressos)

Pizza

Then we tried to find somewhere to eat and walked around the main road nearby. eventually we saw somewhere and went inside. They did the tray bake pizzas and we asked for a slice. She gave me half the pizza and we asked for half again. She just kept cutting it in half over and over but still gave it us all. It was now in 16ths of the original pizza and she was still cutting! By this point we just accepted we would only have one flavour of pizza.

She then asked if we wanted it hot, we said yes then she didn’t understand despite us pointing to the oven.
We gave up and just took the tray over to a table but she came running over with her serviettes thinking that’s what we wanted!

We then walked home and realised there’s some lovely looking restaurants at the end of our street (literally 100ft!) Which the following day turned out to be the best pizza we had in Rome.

Hotel

A couple of days later, our hotel was cancelled for the one extra night we booked. So we booked an airbnb for less money and went there, after going to the Vatican with all our luggage (not the best move!) we found this place.

It was near the Basilica de San Giovanni which is beautiful. Once we got into the building, we tried to work out which floor our room would be on. The last place we had been number 30 and the 1st floor so i guessed number 5 would be on the top floor.

Nothing beats the sight of two people and two huge bags trying to get into the tiny lift. Once we were in, we guessed the top floor and starting going up.

At the first floor we saw our host who was waving frantically and we just stood there, squashed into a lift waving back!

We went back down and had a good night there. We are now travelling to Firenze (Florence) so I’m sure we will have far more hilarious Italian misunderstandings to report!

See you next time!

The Great Ambini

x x x

I also wrote these posts about Italy :-

• Eataly 
• How to find the best Gelato
• 72 hours in Rome