Letter about Italy and the Italian people
Dear _________,
How are you? Here all is ok. In your last letter, you have asked me to
tell you something about Italy and the Italian peoplewell, here I am! First
of all, you have to know that I love Italy: I think Italy is one of the best
countries to live in, and here I will tell you why. In my Country, there are a
lot of different places: in the North, there are the Alps, where you can go to
ski - if you like it (I hate skiing!) - or to have a nice time relaxing,
walking in the nature and visiting a lot of small and nice villages lost in the
valleys. Then, going southward (=verso sud), you arrived in the plain of the Po
(=pianura padana), where the climate is worse than in the other parts of Italy,
because of the fog; here, there are a lot of farms and rice-field. The Centre
of Italy is very various: there are some seaside resort (=luoghi di
villeggiatura balneare)- like Liguria, where I live, the Riviera Romagnola, the
Isle of Elba, etc - but also the Apennine: in Italian, its name means "little
Alps", but sometimes they are not very low! The South and the two major isles -
Sicily and Sardinia - are very popular because of the white-sand beaches and
the clean sea.
From a tourist point of view, if you wanted to have a sight-seeing tour
in Italy, you should visited an infinitude of cities, because Italy have
perhaps the greatest number of historical places in the world. Some examples?
Venice, the city on the canals; Genoa, with the biggest aquarium of Europe; Florence,
Dante's fatherland (=patria) and Rome, that doesn't need other explanation; but
also Milan, Turin, Naples and then Pompei, Caserta, Verona, Ravenna
In order to describe the Italian people, I must distinguish different
groups: the dwellers of Genoa are popular because of their stinginess
(=taccagneria), while the inhabitants of the Riviera Romagnola are very nice
and friendly; the dwellers of Milan have usually a snobbish attitude while we
say that the inhabitants of Naples are «guappi», that means cunning (=scaltro,
anche se guappo vuol dire + precisamente furbastro)however, these are
commonplace!
Wellare you satisfied? And what about you? Describe me your country
and the people they live in!
Write me soon. Mattia
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