Italian coffee rules. We don’t need to tell you that. We’ve gotten much more sophisticated as a coffee-drinking people ourselves. Surely most of us know our cappuccino from our macchiato well before we set foot on a plane. (We may have even gotten a twenty ounce latte at the drive-thru coffee shop on the way…
Glen and his wife, Marshall, have been on 5 UnTours, travelling with us first in 1999: Tuscany (1999,2005), Umbria (2006), Venice-Umbria (2007), Tuscany- Umbria (2011). Tell us a little bit about your most recent UnTour. We spent one week in Tuscany and one week in Umbria. I am a professional photographer and I love to photograph…
A festival at one of UnTours’ home villages, Murlo is one way that you can see the strong bonds of community that are typical in an Italian community; it’s one hallmark of the Italian culture. In an attempt to better understand Italy, today’s culture clue is an overview of some of Italian culture’s more famous…
This week’s UnTourist of the Week, Doris Matick because of her lovely photos of Spain that you see in the slideshow below. But when we asked her for her UnTour impressions, she went all over the map. Which is not to say, she doesn’t love Spain. Check out her wonderful blog post on UnTours Cafe,…
As we move from May’s focus on Prague and Budapest into June’s insights on Austria, I want to introduce you to the dynamic duo delivering these delicious UnTours – meet Cathrin Baumbach and Sue Baker! If you know either of these brilliant women, you know that they know their stuff when it comes to anything…
Editor’s Note: This post was written by guest blogger, Samantha DuBois. She is the author of the blog TravelGirlSeesWorld.com and has recently returned from a semester abroad in Padova (Padua), Italy, where she lived with a host family and took all of her classes in Italian. We hope you enjoy her writing as much as…
As we begin to close out January and, subsequently, our daily features on Italy (France is coming in February!), I wanted to take a moment to recognize our Italian dynamic duo, Andi Cancelliere and Andrea Szyper, for all they do to make UnTours such a great place and this blog chock full of delectable Italian…
Photo: “Piazza Santa Croce” © 2008 John Spooner, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ Domenico The next time you vacation in Florence, make sure you stay in the Santa Croce section of the city. Here, you’ll not only find our lovely Domenico apartment, you’ll also find some relaxation – if you want to…
Here are the most common coffees you’ll find in an Italian bar; most of these should be available in the ubiquitous “bar” no matter where you are in Italy: Caffè In Italy the word “caffè’” naturally implies an espresso. There is no need to specify “espresso” when ordering. Served in a demitasse cup. Caffè macchiato:-…
It’s no accident that there are few if any Starbucks in Italy. Arguably, Italy (in our humble opinion) invented the concept that Starbucks shoots for. In Italy there often are two or three bars per city block, staffed by a skilled “barista” who knows their customer personally and serves even the quickest, cheapest coffee with…