Italy has been one of the biggest tourist destinations for around one century now.
EVERYONE IS WELCOME TO ITALY
Who started the trend to travel to Italy? Originally, we’ve been visited by British: Italy was a thermal destination for nobles who were sent here by their doctors for our wonderful weather conditions. Later, Germans and Scandinavians discovered the beauty of our Adriatic Sea and started to travel to Italy during the summer.
Nowadays, everyone from all over the world has a-travel-to-Italy in their bucket list.
THE ITALIANITY
Since the beginning, we have been welcoming travellers with great open-mindedness. We have always loved foreigners and have always gone out of our way to give directions, or to help with the language. We got used to different accents, ways of thinking, clothes, habits, and we also adopted some of them. On the other side, our tourists have become more aware of the Italianity, our way of doing things, and most of them tried to adapt and mingle with us.
But there are some specific things that we still see tourist do every day here, and we can’t avoid smiling and thinking: << You are sooooo foreign>> 
. These things happen often throughout your travel to Italy, but we notice mostly at the table, that is where we are maybe more traditional, for sure more peculiar than all the other cultures. I know there’s a lot of attention around our habits, things that we do or avoid doing naturally and instinctively, but that can become a complicated set of rules.
My Aussie hubby, after all these years, still complains <<you Italians have soooo many rules!>> LOL.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Everyone is welcome to Italy
The Italianity
The 5 most common mistakes, when people travel to Italy
1 – Cappuccino at the end of a meal and after 12:00 pm.
2 – Parmesan on fish/seafood.
3 – Olive oil on bread.
4 – Eat bread with pasta or order both pizza and pasta.
5 – Eat dinner before 7:00 pm.
What you’ve learnt
THE 5 MOST COMMON MISTAKES, WHEN PEOPLE TRAVEL TO ITALY
If you are one of those, like him, who tries hard not to be immediately spotted as a foreigner, here below you will find a list of things you should definitely avoid doing when you travel to Italy.
If you are a proud foreigner, instead, not concerned about being spotted, I would still advise you to keep on reading, only to understand the reason why, sometimes Italian waiters are reluctant in satisfying your request, or can’t satisfy it at all.
1 – CAPPUCCINO AT THE END OF A MEAL AND AFTER 12:00 PM.
This is an easy one, maybe the most famous mistake. I think everyone at this point knows that cappuccino is a breakfast drink. And still, I see so many people with a cappuccino at any time of the day. <<Soooooo foreign!!!>>
But hey allow me this: we invented this drink so, we have also the right to “rule” its use. LOL.
Jokes aside, the main reason why we don’t drink cappuccino after 12:00 pm is because the combination of coffee and a good quantity of milk is very heavy to digest, therefore we can do it in the morning when we normally eat “light”, (only some cookies, or a cornetto or fette biscottate) and our stomach is still empty after the night fasting. We can’t imagine putting our stomach through the digestion of a cappuccino at the end of a meal, lunch or dinner, when we normally eat pasta, meat, vegetables and fruit.
Now, don’t get me wrong, during your travel to Italy, you will notice that we drink coffee (espresso of course!) at the end of every meal. We do it because we love our coffee, but also as that helps with the digestion and also to contrast the effects of a heavy digestion (keeps us awake) but coffee alone, which is a totally different thing from cappuccino.
If you really can’t have coffee alone at the end of a meal, you might want to order a caffè macchiato, which is coffee espresso with a little drop of milk. Now, if you want the foam, you will ask for a caffé macchiato caldo (which is espresso with a drop of warm milk and foam) otherwise, maybe if you travel to Italy in summer, you might want to order a caffé macchiato freddo (espresso with a drop of cold milk and no foam).
2 – PARMESAN ON FISH/SEAFOOD.
I know that most of the people who travel to Italy have been dreaming about our food and in particular, our pasta, knowing our incomparable capability of cooking pasta with amazing fresh fish sauces. I also know that most of our pasta dishes are topped with incredibly tasteful grated Parmesan cheese, that was a great invention of ours. But something that you might not know is that food is like everything else in life, and not all the great ingredients are still great if they are all mixed together. Just like the different colour palettes or the music notes.
Some flavours can be mixed together and are delicious, some others can’t. Now, this is again instinctive. I can’t explain to you the exact, scientific reason (if there’s one) why you don’t spread grated Parmesan cheese on a pasta and fish/seafood dish, I just can say <<don’t do it, please>>. In our mind, the fish/seafood goes in a palette of all different flavours, like olives, oregano, tomato, lemon, more “sea flavours”; while Parmesan cheese goes in a palette of meat, cold cuts, tomato, red wine, more “land flavours”.
For sure, anyway, we can’t decide what everyone likes, and that’s why nowadays, some restaurants have adapted to the tourists’ requests, and you will get a grated Parmesan cheese dispenser with your pasta and fish/seafood dish, but not in all restaurants. So, my only request is: if you don’t get it, please, don’t ask for it. Try it the Italian way, you’ll love it, I promise!
3 – OLIVE OIL ON BREAD.
This is a big misunderstanding that there is out there. During my three years in the US whenever I was going to a self-nominated, supposedly Italian Restaurant, as a first starter we were receiving bread with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. The first time, I even asked my husband: “What are we supposed to do with this?”.
The truth is: olive oil and vinegar in Italy are used to dress salads. You will never see an Italian starting -or continuing or finishing if that matters- their meal with pieces of bread with a drop of oil or -even worse- vinegar on the top. I can’t even imagine dipping bread in olive oil or -even worse- balsamic vinegar.
To be fair, once in my life I saw dipping bread in olive oil: I was in Malaga (Spain) hosted by a family in the countryside, and it was breakfast! (OmG, I remember I couldn’t believe they were doing it while I was drinking my morning coffee, and I couldn’t check either, as I had to avoid looking at it to stop the sense of vomit, I got from the sight of it). Anyways, that was Spain, not Italy. You might be welcome to do it if you travel to Spain, but not if you travel to Italy. LOL
So, if you sit at a table, and you don’t find olive oil and vinegar with bread, don’t ask for them. If you find them, most probably you have just found the most touristy, less authentic restaurant in the whole country. Also, when you have olive oil and vinegar in bottles on your table, they are there for you to dress your salads, any other use you can make of them would look rude and tooooootally foreign.
4 – EAT BREAD WITH PASTA OR ORDER BOTH PIZZA AND PASTA.
This is kind of intuitive again for us, but I notice that it is not for all the people who travel to Italy. Bread -or grissini or crackers- is something that we eat at the table together with something else, true, but we are very careful at the right match. By being very high in carbohydrates, bread cannot be matched with another carbohydrate based food such as pasta. We will then eat bread -or grissini or crackers- with salads, cold cuts, maybe some kind of meats. With the same criteria we will never eat pasta and pizza in the same meal.
5 – EAT DINNER BEFORE 7:00 PM.
This is really a big watershed. No Italian would eat dinner before 7:00 pm. During your travel to Italy, you will discover that some restaurants, especially the authentic ones, the ones that don’t -or rarely work- with tourists, are not even open before 7:00 or 7:30 pm. While if you travel to big cities and touristic destinations, you won’t have any problem in finding a place to sit at a table and order a full meal at 5:30/6:00ish pm, you also will want to keep it in mind if you travel to less touristy places, where you might not find a restaurant open for your early dinner.
But you are in Italy, so, no panic! For sure, you will find a bar instead where they are ready to serve you a wonderful aperitivo (yes, that’s how we get to have dinner at 8:00 pm without starving!).
WHAT YOU’VE LEARNT
So, to recap, during your travel to Italy, here’s what you want to do: order cappuccino only for breakfast, don’t spread grated Parmesan cheese on seafood/fish pasta dishes, don’t ask for olive oil/balsamic vinegar on bread, don’t try to eat pasta and bread together or pasta and pizza in the same meal, sit down at 6:00 pm for an aperitivo and wait until 7:30 pm for dinner. This way you will have experienced the Italian way of life, and not only our amazing food and wine in our astonishing piazzas and terraces, but still with your foreign mindset.
However, thanks to my extensive experience in travel and life abroad, I admit, sometimes it is hard to leave one’s habit totally behind, therefore, if some -or all- of my don’ts are your habit, you are very welcome to keep them even during your travel to Italy.
Of course, you will be immediately spotted as a tourist, but hey, is it that bad, after all?
