Instantly Italy

Italian language, culture and travel tips

Il Bel Centro: a book about moving to Italy with kids and experiencing expat life as a family

If you want to Be Italian For A Weekend, you can join the Vespa ride and get a three-day email crash course about Italian culture!

Even if I am Italian and I know quite a lot about living in Italy, I am a big fan of books about expat life in my country.

I started reading this kind of books before Instantly Italy was even a remote idea in my mind and enjoyed them very much. I started with Under The Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes, back in the days, and kept on looking for other accounts of life in Italy as a foreigner ever since.

[Read more…]

Expats in Italy: Interviewing Jasmine C. Mah

How is living in Italy as an expat?

Well, let’s see. I have interviewed quite a few people for this section now and it seems that living in Italy is hard but incredibly beautiful as well. Getting used to this crazy country can be challenging but there are a lot of rewards. Bureaucracy might try to kill you but there’s always a glass of prosecco to save your life. 

[Read more…]

Expats in Italy: Chatting with Kamila Kowalska

The interview here below was originally in Italian and I translated it for you. If you want to have a bilingual transcript of the interview to practice your Italian, you can get it by subscribing here.

I was looking very much forward to the chance of speaking with an expat and the time has finally come.

I am so happy I am able to interview another expat for my “Expats in Italy” series! As some of you may remember, last year I started this blog section about expats in Italy because I was really curious to hear what people coming from other countries had to say about Italy and how living in this country as a foreigner is. 

[Read more…]

[Life in Italy #11] April 2017

If you want to Be Italian For A Weekend, you can join the Vespa ride and get a three-day email crash course about Italian culture!

April has been quite a relaxing month, here in Italy. 

As I have told you in my post about spring, if you are lucky April can be a month full of days off. In fact, if Easter falls in April, you get to have some days off for that festivity. Moreover, if April 25th – which is Liberation Day here in Italy – falls either on a Friday or a Monday, you get another day off. But you can even do better if May 1st – another Italian public holiday – falls again either at the beginning or at the end of a weekend.

[Read more…]

[Life in Italy – Episode #10] March 2017

If you want to Be Italian For A Weekend, you can join the Vespa ride and get a three-day email crash course about Italian culture!

Another month has gone, it’s quite incredible. 

March is definitely a long month, but this time it’s gone so fast I barely realized it passed. And to be honest, I have no idea how that happened. It’s probably because the weather has been really nice and therefore we had the opportunity of enjoying a lot of time outside and we didn’t notice the passing of time.

[Read more…]

[Life in Italy – Episode #9] February 2017

If you want to Be Italian For A Weekend, you can join the Vespa ride and get a three-day email crash course about Italian culture!

February is always quite a jolly month, over here. 

Winter is finally coming to an end, we start feeling the warmth of spring, mimosa flowers are blooming most everywhere and there are a lot of fun events around the country.

[Read more…]

[Life in Italy – Episode #8] January, 2017

If you want to Be Italian For A Weekend, you can join the Vespa ride and get a three-day email crash course about Italian culture!

January hasn’t exactly been an easy month, here in Italy. 

Well, this can be said for the rest of the world too. We are not going through easy times, but we have to be strong. January in Italy meant quite a few disasters and lots of sadness too. But there are some positive things as well, so let me tell you everything about it.

[Read more…]

[Life in Italy – Episode #7] November 2016

If you want to Be Italian For A Weekend, you can join the Vespa ride and get a three-day email crash course about Italian culture!

November’s gone, it’s time for another episode of Life in Italy. 

I don’t really like November, to be honest. Here in Italy, it begins with All Saints’ Day, on November 1st, and the Day of the Dead, on November 2nd, two days you spend remembering the ones you lost. This makes quite a sad beginning for a month which, in my opinion, is just a useless break between the lovely beginning of fall in October and the brightness of December.

[Read more…]

[Life in Italy – Episode #6] October, 2016

If you want to Be Italian For A Weekend, you can join the Vespa ride and get a three-day email crash course about Italian culture!

Hey, there. Life in Italy is back!

It’s been a while since I last wrote about this topic, I know. I stopped updating this section of the blog because I was not totally convinced of its content. It was a mixture of private life and general happenings and it didn’t feel right.
[Read more…]

A book about moving to Italy and finding happiness in the Italian countryside

If you want to Be Italian For A Weekend, you can join the Vespa ride and get a three-day email crash course about Italian culture!

If you go to a bookstore, you’ll surely find a lot of memoirs about moving to Italy and living the Italian dream.

One of the most famous is undoubtedly Under The Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes, but there are many others. I have read quite a few of them and I had to admit they tend to follow the same cliché: moving to Tuscany, buying property there and finding the love of your life. Which isn’t quite a bad scenario at all, to be honest.

[Read more…]