Why Italy

Is it hard to make it around somewhere like Italy without knowing much Italian at all?

How do you negotiate prices with street vendors and stuff or are they just used to telling how much something is without asking? lol. My mom and I are thinking about a trip to Italy through a tour, but she's paranoid that we'll get stranded on our time alone in the cities and not find our way because we don't speak the language.

Public Comments

1. It's not too hard if you stay near tourist mainstream areas where some people will speak English.
2. You will find dozens and dozens of English speakers everywhere you go in Italy. Not only that, but you won't find a more wonderful bunch of people to guide you on your way -- Italians are well known for their warmth and hospitality. Do not hesitate to enjoy Italy with your mother. It will be the trip of a lifetime!
3. I have just returned from traveling around in Slovakia and Czech republic where I do not speak the language at all and where the people speak English much less than in Italy. It took a little longer to check in at hotels because of the language difficulties, but never real problems. I found that most people selling either have a piece of paper and pen or a calculator handy, in the few cases they did not, I had my piece of paper and pen. They will write or enter the price and you can read it, if you want to haggle you can even enter your own offer that way. That way you can talk about prices without having to actually talk. Point at something and hold up the right number of fingers or just ask in English what it costs, people trying to sell understand all ways to ask prices, they are doing it all day every day. In Italy it is still very unlikely that you will get to places where English is not spoken at all, and a few words will go a long way when you want to understand. And to get back to your hotel you only need the hotel address to give to a taxi driver and money to pay him, no way to get really lost.
4. If you're in the major tourist areas, you won't have any problem at all since many people speak English. In smaller towns here, you will find fewer people that speak English, but there will still be some. On a tour you won't have a problem at all. For people traveling on their own, the trains are a common mode of travel. In the smaller train stations, announcements will be in Italian only, but most of the announcements are just the arrival and departure of trains. The only ones that will really matter to you are track changes. In stations that have a lot of tracks, it is very likely that announcements will be both in Italian and English though. Some of the conductors don't speak English, but that shouldn't be a problem since they only want to check that your ticket has been validated before you got on the train.
5. I had no problem at all