Breakfast Italian style

For many years now, I think at least since 1998 we have made all our hotel bookings with Booking.com, we really like their site and how it is structured. We usually chose an hotel based on the comments left by other people who have stayed at the same hotel and rated it on various grounds, in terms of service, cleanliness, staff, location, etc.

Some comments leave me laughing or seriously wondering if some people should travel at all, let alone leave their house.

In Italy the way meals are structured is very different from elsewhere in Northern Europe or North America. There is no culture or idea that breakfast is the most important meal of the day for kids or adults, that concept does not exist, it is unknown. Usually in the morning people will have a cappuccino or an espresso with a croissant, either plain or filled with honey or jam, you may also have a juice or a fruit cup or a yogurt, that is breakfast. 

Then by 10 am you will have another coffee and maybe a tramensino, which is a sandwich of white bread with a filling like tomato and tuna or ham and cheese, usually warmed up. But again most people will just have an espresso.

No one is having ham and eggs or sausages and bacon or oatmeal or French toast, steak and beans, waffles and whatever else is eaten elsewhere in Northern climes. So I am usually surprise to hear people comment that while they stayed in an hotel in Italy the breakfast was poor or the selection limited. In fact what you are served is an Italian breakfast, what 60 million Italians eat each day.

If you wish to explain to those 60 million people how wrong they are and how you are here to enlightened them, go ahead, you will probably get strange looks. Since you are on vacation just relax and enjoy, you may shed a few unwanted pounds.

Of course if you wish to have such foods for breakfast any 3 star hotel and up will be happy to prepare such items for you, all you have to do is asked. This is the way it is done in Italy.