Episode #001: Welcome to Untold Italy travel podcast

Josie: 00:06 Ciao and ben venuti to Untold Italy. I’m Josie.

Katy: 00:08 And I’m Katy and we’re here to help you plan your trip to Italy.

Josie: 00:13 Between us, we have many years of travel experience and we want to help you uncover your own as yet untold stories and adventures in Italy.

Katy: 00:21 Each episode you’ll hear practical advice, tips, and ideas to help you plan your own trips to the magical land of history, stunning landscapes, and a whole lot of pasta.

Josie: 00:30 We’ll have interviews from experts and focus on local destinations and frequently asked questions about traveling to Italy.

Katy: 00:37 Thanks for listening and make sure to subscribe to our show. Now let’s get started on your regular dose of Bella Italia

Josie: 00:53 Welcome to our very first episode of untold Italy. Today we are going to tell you what our show is going to be about and what you can expect from our upcoming episodes of untold Italy.

Katy: 01:03 Great. Thanks Josie. So in a nutshell, we’ll be sharing our favorite tips and advice about planning trips to Italy so you can plan amazing trips of your own. Later on in the show, we’ll share a few of our favorite general travel tips for Italy. And we also want to tell the story of our first trips there and how we came to create this podcast.

Josie: 01:22 Firstly, let us tell you a bit about who we are and how we can help you plan your trip to Italy.

Katy: 01:28 I think that’s a good idea. We are two Australian women who share a love of Italy and want to share our knowledge with people all around the world. So they fall in love with Italy too. So first up, let’s hear from Josie about how she fell in love with Italy.

Josie: 01:41 Thanks Katy. So my love of Italy comes from my family heritage and background. My parents came out from Italy many years ago and so I am first generation Australian. So my love comes from the family environment. We come from a Southern part of Italy called Calabria. I don’t speak very well my Italian, I do speak a dialect, but my love comes from my grandparents or my Nonna and my Nonni that taught me about the food, the culture. And just the amazing place it is. So I’m, I love Italy. I’ve been back many, many times to visit family. I’ve still got all my aunties and cousins there. And just really, really enjoyed the background of where I’ve come from. So that’s my love. How about you, why do you love Italy so much, Katy?

New Speaker: 02:30 Well, Josie, I fell in love with Italy when I first visited in the 90s, and it was a trip inspired by my studies. I studied Renaissance history at high school and I just absolutely fell in love with the history and culture of Italy and I wanted to go and explore it for myself. And so many years later, and many trips, after many, many trips to Italy, I eventually met my husband and just like Josie, his family is from Calabria. He’s first-generation Australian. So now we have family in Milan and Sicily and also Calabria that we have been able to visit several times as well. So I think, you know, it’s all culminated in, a mutual love for Italy.

Josie: 03:11 Katy from your love of Italy in all the many years that you’ve gone. I can see that it’s translated into more of a wanting to help people and really help them plan their trips, help them to understand Italy and really get the love that both you and I have for Italy. And you’ve done that through having your own Facebook page.

Katy: 03:29 Yes. Thanks Josie. So we have an Italy travel planning Facebook page, which everyone’s welcome to join. And this came about as a result of writing many articles from on my blog and my Italy travel planning resource sites. So if you wanting to go check those out, which I’d love you to do. The blog is called Untold Morsels where we talk about a lot of food travel, which I really love. And Italy, Untold Italy has travel resources for planning your trip to Italy. And that’s kind of what inspired these podcasts as well. So if you would, if you’re a Facebook person, and I know some people are and some people aren’t, but we’d love to see you on the Facebook group, it’s free to join. I’ll drop a link to the Facebook page and the Facebook group on the show notes and you can sign up and if you’ve got any questions, everyone’s there willing to help. There’s currently 22,000 members give or take and there’s experienced people and first timers asking lots of questions. So even if you’re a bit shy, you can still get the answers that you want if you do a search in the group.

Josie: 04:37 So anyone can join, right?

Katy: 04:39 Yeah, that’s right. And the more the merrier. We just love helping people plan their trips to Italy. We get probably hundreds of questions a week, and there’s no silly questions, so hopefully we’re going to be able to answer some of these in the podcast as well. But you are more than welcome to join and I’d love to see you there.

Josie: 04:56 And the more questions that are better so that you can learn what you need to, what you need for your trips to Italy.

Katy: 05:02 Yes. And we’ll be grabbing those questions to feed them into the podcast in case you just want to listen to the questions and not read through lots and lots of text. I know everyone consumes information differently.

Josie: 05:13 Great. Fantastic.

Katy: 05:15 So JC, I come from the perspective of an independent traveler and someone that has experiencing travel to Italy on my own and with my partner and my family. But you have a slightly different perspective. Apart from that you obviously do that yourself, you come from the travel industry.

Josie: 05:32 Yeah, that’s correct. So from our first trip that we went to Italy, obviously I loved it. I loved traveling. So I decided that when I finished school that I would become a travel agent and get into the travel industry. So I’ve had various roles over my years from a travel agent to running travel businesses and really being involved in anything from airlines to hotels to knowing about visas and, and really working that for 16 years. And then from there I looked at another company that I really wanted to work with or another industry within the travel industry. And that was hotels. So I would probably consider myself a hotelier which I’ve done again for, for numerous years across many different international brands. Being a director of sales and marketing. So for me, I come from one the love of Italy and traveling from an independent traveler, but also from the industry and understanding the industry and some of the things there and the nuances of different things. And totally from a hotel perspective you know, I’ve used Airbnb and hotels coming from four of the largest global chains that I’ve worked for. So really understanding your accommodation across the globe, but a lot in Italy because it’s really different and unique Katy.

Katy: 06:50 Yeah, that’s right. And we’ll be getting into that in future episodes, which I love talking about too, because there’s some really, as you said, some unique and different accommodation that you can try in Italy. But for now, what we wanted to do was share with you is our first trip to Italy. So that you can understand the really the emotions that it stirred for us, that really spurred us on to, to really share this love of Italy with you.

Josie: 07:17 So if I speak about my first time I was quite young and my parents and grandparents hadn’t been back to Italy since they came to Australia. So it was quite an emotional trip. They would go, we were going back to a family wedding in Calabria and on the way obviously, we stopped in Rome and for a teenage girl who’d heard all about and, and really we had studied, but the enormity of arriving into Rome and seeing the Vatican and seeing the Spanish stairs and everything else about Rome, the Colosseum, and then going on a little plane to Calabria which is a, not even an hour, probably a half an hour trip by flight and showing up in our, my mum and dad’s villages. So for me it was an amazing experience and I think looking back now, being young how much we did back in those days, it was definitely different to travel than it is today and there and what I experienced from the memories of my family. And my grandparents have passed away now, but those memories of Italy and going back to where they were born to show us what they, where they came from from, you know, different villages. And then we also had the different feasts in the weddings and the culture and the food that you can’t have as much as we try to replicate it back home. It was really different.

Katy: 08:37 I can imagine now having been back to Calabria with my husband’s family, it’s, it is a really unique culture and it’s so special. I think we visited I can’t even remember how many there were so many different members of family. We were being driven around all day, but these, it’s a really special family orientated experience and I can imagine it made such a big impact on you.

Josie: 08:58 Yeah, it did. And it also makes me very grateful. And you, you stop sometimes and think about the families that have moved away from any part of the world to, to set up a new life here. And then now we go back and we enjoy, we have sort of two worlds, right? We have the world we live in now. And you think about the world that they’ve left behind and, and you appreciate one, your family, you appreciate the heritage and then you understand where the love of of Italy and has come from for me and my family and also for you and your family and how you’ve, you’ve actually become. So you know how much you love Italy and you’ve experienced it.

Katy: 09:38 Yeah. So my experience, my first experience was not like yours at all actually. So I first visited easily on a, it’s quite surprising for people that know me, but it was actually on a Trafalgar tour and I was very young. I was about 19, and I had just moved from Australia to the UK and we’d done a tour to, through Europe, to Italy. And the first place that we stopped in was Lake Garda and I have to say it was a very emotional time for me. We stopped in this beautiful place called Malcesine and it was just stunning. And I took my breath away and I was so excited to be there. And I remember just the feeling of seeing the Lake and the castles and the old towns and the cobblestones. I was just, I just fell in love straight away. And recently I found the diary that I wrote of that trip and it was quite, you know, I can see the emotion coming out in the diary and it was, it’s actually, I can appreciate now why I’ve taken this path in my life when I, when I look back on those pages and probably why I started a blog, which is, this is kind of strange in a way. I had no idea that that was going to happen then. And I think that for me also on that trip, I fell in love with Venice and that’s, that’s really my, my favorite city. I know Josie loves Rome very much, but Venice for me is holds a magical place in my heart and I’ll always want to return there. It’s just, it’s one of those most unique places on earth that you can’t imagine even unless you go there.

Josie: 11:09 I think it’s really interesting because when we talk about where we love, Venice always comes up as your number one and something that really resonated with me one day when you actually, we were talking about and he said, JC, nowhere in the world are you going to see a city like that. And I have to 100% agree with that. I think you’re right. But anywhere you go in Rome or in Italy, I love Rome because I think every two minutes you see something, every step you take, there’s, you know, who’s walked before you and what can you, what can you do? So I think in this, in these podcasts and what we really want to do on our show is to really take you on a journey of what we love. And I think with, with the way Katy has translated her love into her blogs and into her communication and into the Facebook pages are will help all of you. If you’re planning a trip or you want to go or you just love Italy you know, join us every week and, and we’ll, we’ll definitely take you on our Italy.

Katy: 12:03 Oh, I hope we can. And it’s just, it’s really a pleasure for us to be able to talk about it really. And we could talk about it all day, but as we really created the podcast to help people that we really wanted to share with you, one of our favorite general tips about traveling to Italy and so that you can get an idea of the type of insight and experience that we can share with you. So Josie, what is your general tip about traveling to Italy?

Josie: 12:28 Well, mine’s very practical Katy. So I would take, drink a drink bottle. So you get really, really, it’s really, really hot. I’m in, in, in Rome or any of those places it gets in Italy, it gets really hot and take your own drink bottles. They have free water from the fountains. And it’s great water. You can drink it, it’s all good and you’re not paying the, you know, the money of, of getting bottled water all the time. So I would highly recommend taking your own water bottle and filling up.

Katy: 12:58 totally. And it helps the environment too, right? Like so you can, you don’t need to keep buying plastic bottles and you can take use of the water fountains that have been there for hundreds of years and it’s highly drinkable water and the people of Italy do it all the time. So I absolutely love that tip. Take your drink bottle and fill up with the free water.

Josie: 13:19 So what’s your tip, Katy?

Katy: 13:21 So mine’s a bit more sort of more of a feeling, I guess. And it’s really, you know, I’m really understand people have limited time often when they’re visiting Italy and they may not have the ability to travel there as much as we do. And it might be their first trip. They might be trying to, it might be their only trip. But whatever way you’re going and however you’re traveling, just try and slow down a little bit. You know, there’s so many highlights. There’s so many things to see. But let me promise you that if you relax and slow down and enjoy your daily gelato, wandering around the beautiful historic sites and just enjoying La Dolce Vita, you will, that will be the memory that sticks with you. Yes, you’ll be amazed that you saw the Coliseum. You’ll be amazed at the art in the Uffizi gallery. You will be. But that feeling that stays with you, and I guess it’s the feeling that’s really drawn us to this point of creating a podcast is, is the feeling that will stay with you forever.

Josie: 14:22 I agree, Katy. I think for me it’s every time I close my eyes, we do, we’ve started this podcast and I closed my eyes and I can really feel or see and, and just, and just taste and experience what, what, what we love about it So let’s tell our listeners what we’re going to got coming up for our next episodes. We’re going to be doing itinerary planning, highlights of different cities. So Rome, Florence, I’m also talking about food, our favorite.

Katy: 14:50 Yes. I think they’re definitely going to be our favorite episodes. So what’s coming up on our next episode, Josie?

Josie: 14:56 So our next episode, episode number two, is about how to plan and tips on how to plan your itinerary.

Katy: 15:04 I can’t wait. Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast for all the latest upcoming episodes, grads yet. Thanks for listening and ciao for now.

Josie: 15:12 Ciao.