For this year's spring break vacation we decided to take a trip to Italy.  We wanted to focus mainly on the Florence area, but also see a bit of Rome, Pisa, and the Cinque Terre coastal cities.

This was to be our first trip to Italy, and our first international trip where we did not either speak the native language or travel with someone who spoke the language well.   We had heard that Italians tend to be very accommodating and most of the people we would be dealing with would know English.  This was generally true - we actually had very little problem with the basics of navigation, hotels, and restaurants.

I did take the opportunity to use the 10 hour flight to cram on basic Italian phrases and numbers.  Once in the country we were able to get by with that and a very abbreviated phrase list.