Speaking Italian

I've got to say that I think we communicated well with people throughout Italy without knowing any Italian before leaving. There is something to be said for the expressiveness of Italians' hand gestures. Anyway, we quickly learned the basics - bonjourno, ciao, grazie, prego. Of course, with our enthusiasm, curiosity, and a healthy serving of creativity, we also learned a few other phrases to help make ourselves understood. I'll start with some of the more creative ones that are the founding names of this blog.

1. Ziggity-Zaggety Though most Italians don't know this one, we found it a perfect way to describe the country roads that led us to our villa and many of the other hill towns we visited.  Hopefully we'll get a video up here to demonstrate what words can't describe. Of course, the various types of cars we rented also made the experience different!

2. Shee-ta! This one is always pronounced as an exclamation. This one is thanks to Mr. Puliti and his family (am I allowed to hold them responsible for this?). Use it interchangeably with "Oh-no" or "crap!" You get the message.

3. Tartufo, Prosciutto, Carpaccio These are a few of my favorite things! Food, food and more food! So good! The three mentioned here are just a few of the wonderful foods that Italians are know for...and that we couldn't get enough of while we were living it up!

TARTUFO! Holy cow that's a lot of truffle! Yes please!

Prosciutto!

Salmon Carpaccio

 4. Italian Direction "Words"  Okay, so it's not like we actually learned how to say "left", "right", "straight", per say, but anytime we stopped for directions, we wound up on the right path immediately. "San Miniato"  was  down to the bottom of the hill, make a left, go up a hill, down a hill, and you're there.  And to think of the number of times American TV shows, etc, have made fun of the over-zealous use of hand gestures by Italians...we literally would've been lost without them!

5. Refrere Culo  The spelling is probably wrong. It's not one that we asked anyone to write down for us or anything. On our arrival at the Florence Airport, day one, we rented two cars for the eight of us. A little over an hour into our drive, the lead car pulled over, announcing that the car had over heated and there was a large puddle of liquid at the driver's (Bob) feet.  The men conferred and agreed it was an anti-freeze puddle. A big red light in the dashboard of the car read STOP. There's more to the whole saga, but for now, suffice it to say that the villa owner's son (Nicholas) spent three days dealing with us, the rental company (Dollar) and a taxi service in an attempt to get a replacement. At the end of the ordeal, Mom (Grace) asked Nicholas how to say "pain in the ass" in Italian. "Refrere culo."

"...Nicholas, have we been a real 'refrere culo' or what?"

Unfortunately, this was not one of the 5 (total) cars we rented.

Anyone else have any good Italian (with or without the quotations) words that you/we learned?