Category Archives: Conversational Italian for Travelers Book Reviews

Conversational Italian for Travelers Book Reviews

Conversational Italian for Travelers series of books are available now on amazon.com!  Learn what our readers are saying  about our books to learn Italian!

Try our books for your next trip to Italy!  Read our books and then visit our website at LearnTravelItalian.com to hear the interactive audio dialogues recorded by native Italian speakers for all 18 of our textbook chapters!  Listen as much as you want, at your own pace!

If you’d like a PDF version of any of our books, this can also be found available for purchase to download into two electronic devices on LearnTravelItalian.com.

Our Own Book Reviews

The textbook, Conversational Italian for Travelers, is a fun, friendly book, not formal like most language books, and teaches everything one needs to know to travel to Italy. If you want to really understand the Italian of today, you need this book!

Textbook in Conversational Italian for Travelers series

Conversational Italian for Travelers – Textbook

We learn language and culture as we follow the character Caterina in dialogues that detail her travels through Italy. As she boards planes, trains, and finally takes a ride in her cousin’s car, we learn how to do these things in Italian. When she meets up with her Italian family, we learn the phrases of communicating with others, including what to say if you meet someone special, how to go shopping and how to use the telephone. Finally, Caterina goes on a trip to Lago Maggiore with her Italian family, and we learn phrases needed to stay at a hotel, go sight-seeing, and of course, go to the restaurant and order wonderful Italian food! Many Italian dishes commonly ordered in Italian restaurants are listed in the last three chapters of the book. The Conversational Italian textbook really makes the Italian language and culture come alive!

Visit the Learn Travel Italian Website and look under the About the Book tab if you would like more detailed information about the Conversational Italian for Travelers Textbook.

Below are listed our reference books, with material reproduced from our textbook for quick and easy reference every day, even while in Italy!

Pocket Reference Book - Just the Important Phrases

Just the Important Phrases (with Restaurant Vocabulary and Idiomatic Expressions)
Pocket Reference Book

Your traveling companion in Italy! If you are traveling to Italy, you need this book! Excerpts from the “Just the Important Phrases” chapter sections in the textbook Conversational Italian for Travelers have been compiled in a pocket size reference book perfect to take along on your trip! Keep handy simple phrases of greeting, how to change money, or how to take the train. Learn about how to communicate politely in any situation. And, of course, learn how to read those Italian menus and order at an Italian restaurant! Included are excerpts from the “Idiomatic Expressions” section of the textbook and a list of many Italian dishes commonly ordered in Italian restaurants. Just the Important Phrases contains everything you need to know to converse like a native while in Italy!

Reference Book: Just the Verbs

Just the Verbs – Reference Book

If you are a teacher or student of Italian, you need this reference book! All the information about how to use Italian verbs that you need to know is set out in clear language with easy-to-read, color coded tables. Like the textbook from which it is derived, Just the Verbs focuses on the conversational use of Italian, with detailed explanations made interesting and fun by focusing on travel situations. Present, imperative, past, future and conditional tenses are covered, with realistic examples from daily life. Also find excerpts from the “Grammar” and “Idiomatic Expressions” sections of the Conversational Italian for Travelers textbook. As a complete work in and of itself, this book makes learning Italian verbs really come alive!

Reference Book: Just the Grammar

Just the Grammar – Reference Book

If you are a teacher or student of Italian, you need this reference book! All the Italian grammar you need to know is set out in clear language with easy-to-read, color coded tables. Like the textbook from which it is derived, Just the Grammar focuses on the conversational use of Italian, with detailed explanations made interesting and fun by focusing on travel situations. Italian definite articles, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, possessive adjectives, object pronouns, the partitive and cognates are covered, with emphasis on Italian sentence structure and realistic examples from daily life. Also find excerpts from the “Numbers,” “Verbs” and “Idiomatic Expressions” sections of the Conversational Italian for Travelers textbook.  As a complete work in and of itself, this book makes learning Italian grammar really come alive!

High speed Italian trains

High-Speed Italian Trains Freccia and Italo for Travel in Italy

High-Speed Italian Trains Freccia and Italo for Travel in Italy

FollKathryn for learntravelitalian.comow Caterina in the
Conversational Italian for Travelers series of books!

The Conversational Italian for Travelers textbook begins each chapter with a dialogue from a story about the character Caterina, an American girl who travels to Italy to visit her relatives. As the story continues from one chapter to the next, we learn Italian, and about Italy, in an engaging way through Caterina’s experiences.

High-Speed Italian Trains Freccia and Italo for Travel in Italy

One of the first things Caterina must do after her plane lands in Italy is find her way on the Italian railway system. To listen to dialogues from Chapters 4 and 5 about Caterina’s encounters as she buys a ticket and boards a train in Italy, go to the interactive dialogues on our website at learntravelitalian.com/interactive.html.

For more images and links to the high-speed Italian train system, visit our Pinterest Site, Stella Lucente Italian.

The Cultural Note below, also from the textbook, describes the exciting new high-speed Italian trains of the Freccia and Italo railway systems that have streamlined travel between the major cities in Italy.
—Kathryn Occhipinti

 


Cultural Note: Freccia and Italo Railway Systems for Travel in Italy

The future of train travel is here in Italy today, under the old Trenitalia Ferrovie dello Stato railway system, to which has been added a new network traveled by a fleet of beautiful, high-speed Italian trains—the Freccia (arrow) trains. The high-speed Italian trains for the railway line Frecciarossa (red arrow) link the major cities of Naples, Rome, Florence, Milan, Turin, and Venice and travel up to 175 miles per hour across the country. It is now possible to travel from Milan or Venice to Rome on these high-speed Italian trains in about 3 hours. This Italian network is linked to major European cities outside of Italy as well and can be an efficient way to extend travel plans to neighboring countries, with restaurant cars and sleeper cars available for longer journeys. These cars are also equipped with WiFi for a small fee. The Frecciargento (silver arrow) and Frecciabianca (white arrow) trains are part of this new family of high-speed Italian trains and link smaller cities and towns. For a slightly higher fee, they provide a more comfortable ride than the older local trains and make fewer stops. Ask about the availability of these high-speed Italian trains when purchasing a ticket at the station. Or go to the official Trenitalia site, www.trenitalia.com, and click on one of the three silver tabs in the upper right-hand corner of the homepage for the high-speed Italian Freccia train of your choice.

High speed Italian train Italo
Self-service machine to purchase tickets to ride on an Italo railway high-speed Italian train

Italo is a privately owned company that also offers high-speed Italian passenger train service. Italo offers a club membership for frequent travelers, with private waiting rooms at the train stations and special cars with reclining leather seats, personal TVs, WiFi, and meal service. Look for the bright red automatic ticket machines, or purchase tickets at the Italo ticket offices in the train station. For more information on the Italo family of high-speed Italian trains or to purchase tickets online, use the Italo website at www.italotreno.it.

Read all about this new high-speed Italian train network and learn about traveling throughout Italy on the different classes of trains offered by Trenitalia and Italo on the website The man in Seat 61 at www.seat61.com. Click on the link for Italy and search for “A beginner’s guide to train travel in Italy” to see pictures of each type of train and learn more about the accommodations that are offered.

All of the high-speed Italian trains require a reservation (prenotazione), and the ticket issued will have an assigned car (carrozza) and seat (posto) for each passenger. Look for the car number on the side of the train, or ask the conductor, who will come out of the office to the platform when the train enters the station before departure for the next stop. Tickets for the high-speed Italian trains, as well as local trains, can be purchased online in most cases, starting 60 days before departure, and in some cases, up to 90 days. These online tickets may be discounted up to 60% off the price paid at the train station, depending on how far in advance they are purchased. Beware, though—the timetables change in mid-June and mid-December each year, so be sure to check them again before departing if you have bought tickets in advance. An alternative site, all in English, is www.raileurope.com. And remember, along with your ticket, you will need a valid personal ID to travel between European cities. Or, if you choose ticketless travel (within Italy only), you will need the registration number.

Have fun visiting the Trenitalia and Italo websites!

 Adapted from Conversational Italian for Travelers, Chapter 4, “Cultural Note,” © 2012, Stella Lucente, LLC, by Kathryn Occhipinti. 

Conversational Italian for Travelers Just the Important Phrases
Conversational Italian for Travelers Just the Important Phrases (with Restaurant Vocabulary and Idiomatic Expressions) is YOUR traveling companion in Italy! All the Italian phrases you need to know to enjoy your trip to Italy are right here and fit right into your pocket or purse.

   Available on amazon.com and Learn Travel Italian.com

Best Kathy Twitter Pic edited for blog

Kathryn Occhipinti, MD, is the author of the
Conversational Italian for Travelers
 series of books and a teacher of Italian for travelers to Italy in the Peoria and Chicago area.
“Everything you need to know to enjoy your visit to Italy!”

Join my Conversational Italian! Facebook group and follow me on Twitter at StellaLucente@travelitalian1  and start to learn Italian today for FREE!
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YouTube videos to learn Italian are available from © Stella Lucente, LLC.
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More information on and photographs of Italy can be found on Facebook Stella Lucente Italian and Pinterest Stella Lucente Italian.
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Visit learntravelitalian.com/download.html to purchase/download Conversational Italian for Travelers and find more interesting facts and helpful hints about getting around Italy! Learn how to buy train tickets online, how to make international and local telephone calls, and how to decipher Italian coffee names and restaurant menus, all while gaining the basic understanding of Italian that you will need to know to communicate easily and effectively while in Italy. —From the staff at Stella Lucente, LLC

High-Speed Italian Trains Freccia and Italo for Travel in Italy