Just got back from my honeymoon!
I had an amazing time and we visited Florence and Pisa, as well as some surrounding areas. One thing that struck me was how similar Spanish and Italian are. At one point I was trying to buy some wine and they guy in the shop didn’t speak a word of English, so I just started speaking Spanish and he replied in Italian and we communicated fine. I purchased some lovely Chianti Classico!
Another thing that struck me was that several Italian cities have names which are different to the English equivalents. While I was at the airport information, several people in front of my were asking about the train to Florence. They could only see the train to Firenze! I wonder if it would be worth starting to use the Italian words – Firenze instead of Florence, and so on, to avoid confusion. We now almost always use the name of cities in Chinese as their English names, which makes my life very easy. Although I do sometimes come across regions (especially ethnic minority areas) where names are written in English based on the name in whichever dialect.