Duolingo is great for language learning, but the vocab and syllabus aren’t optimized for quickly learning conversational phrases, which are what you actually need when travelling. Instead of using Duolingo, just get a phrase book.
Here are the survival phrases that I kept pinned on my notes app. It’s very cool and swag to get through dinner without speaking English.
| Italian | |
|---|---|
| Avete un tavolo per due persone? | Do you have a table for two people? |
| Vorremmo sedere fuori | We would like to sit outside |
| due Aperol Spritz, per favore | Two Aperol Spritzs, please |
| Io vorrei la pizza Margherita e lei le linguine | I would like a Margherita pizza and she would like the linguine |
| Dov’è la toilette? | Where is the toilet? (French word for bathroom–a little fancy, maybe, but everyman’s restaurant is his castle) |
| Per favore | Please |
| Gracie | Thank you |
| Scuza | Excuse me |
| Tutto delizioso, grazie! | It’s delicious, thank you! |
| Il conto, per favore | The bill, please |
| Non parlo italiano. Lei parla inglese? | I don’t speak Italian. Do you speak English? |
| veniamo dalla Nuova Zelanda | We are from New Zealand |
| French | |
|---|---|
| Une table pour deux s’il vous plaît | Table for two please |
| Un carafe d'eau | A carafe of water [this is what you should ask for so that you don’t pay for bottled water. Tori learned that from TikTok.] |
| Deux café espresso | Two espressos |
| Où sont les toilettes | Where is the toilet? |
| L’addition | The bill |
| C'était délicieux | It’s delicious |
“Our gales make us hōhā, so many go inside and create.”
—Redmer Yska
In 1816, Byron and John William Polidori were staying at a villa near Lake Geneva when Claire Clairmont (Mary Shelley's stepsister) and Percy and Mary Shelley dropped by to visit for a few days. They extended their stay once the rain set in. Mount Tambora had recently erupted, creating a volcanic winter. To keep themselves amused, they took turns reading stories of phantasmagories to each other before Byron proposed a challenge: that they all try their hand at writing the best ghost story. The result? The beginnings of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Polidori's The Vampyre, and Byron's poem ‘The Darkness.’
I learned this at the Keats-Shelley House in Rome, which I only heard of this year. When Keats grew ill he moved to Rome for the benefit of the Italian weather. The little flat in which he spent his last days overlooks the Spanish steps and has been converted into a museum to not just Keats, but all the English Romantics who spent some time in Rome on their Grand Tour.
On the terrace of the Keats-Shelley house. When I asked the librarian if we could go onto the terrace, she replied, “you most certainly can and, what’s more, you must. It’s not to be missed.” You can see la Scalinata behind us.
https://x.com/Olly_Tennis_/status/1697966583660831008?s=20
To be sure, there are nefarious and malevolent people with less-than-wholesome business practices whose enterprises may best be characterized as traps. We should be sympathetic to the plights of those who fall victim to such deceptions.
However, lots of the time when tourists describe something as a tourist trap they are merely describing situations where bad economics prevail and where they were unwilling, or unable, to exercise intelligent effort towards avoiding said bad economics.
A common so-called tourist trap is expensive dining. To avoid this so-called trap, recall the economics of dining well: