Customer Reviews

Globe Trekker - Italy

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Globe Trekker is a really fun travel show with charismatic hosts. On this disc, popular host Megan McCormick explores northern Italy while Justine Shapiro journeys through southern Italy. We'll see some of the familiar sights, like Rome and Venice but also many less-visited locales which offer their own unique character, culture, and cuisine. Some of the sights include the Dolomites (great for skiing), Ivrea's fun orange-pelting festival, Parma (home of Parmaggiano Reggiano cheese), an awesome Ferrari car museum, and Verona's casa di Giulietta.

There's lots more, and Globe Trekker is fun to watch whether you're planning a vacation or enjoy experiencing new countries from the sofa.

This disc contains 2 episodes from the show, so it's a good bargain for your bucks, too!

PITIFUL!!!
Silly commentary, sub-standard and grainy photography with dizzying cuts, and a general ignorance and obvious lack of taste on the part of the entire production team make this item an enormous rip-off!

Thin on content, one learns little to nothing about what to see. Important treasures and antiquities are glossed over or omitted completely. None of the mysitcal beauty and abundant charm of this wonderful country is conveyed, and in fact, leaves the viewer disenchanted.

If you're serious about learning about travel in a foreign country, stay away from Globe Trekker Productions, and look to Rick Steeves' video series for a great experience.

This DVD has some wonderful, little seen footage of small towns, and cultural events that an average tourist doesn't see. The hosts on both the Northern and Southern are very good; though I favor the host of the southern article the most. It is very well done, and doesn't disappoint.

This is terrible, if what you are looking for is a travel guide.

If you want to watch a sort of cute young lady's home movie of traveling in Italy, you might like this. It gives very little helpful information about traveling in the region.

There are other companies who produce helpful travel guides.

Great product if you are planning a trip to Italy and want to get a feel for the italian way of life.. I was slightly disapointed that it didnt include Rome, but you can buy this on a seperate VHS

Globe Trekker - Italy, is a DVD lasting about 2 hours, with host
Megan McCormick touring North Italy and Justine Shapiro touring
South Italy.

The intended audience for this work, is those who want a relaxed,
informal and simpleton, yet honest preview of what there is to
visit, in that country.

Those planning the visit quite likely will be on a planned itinerary
with a travel agency, or trying to spend as reasonable as possible,
without sacrificing the quality or time of the various places seen.

Suggestions are made, for rural tourism (staying at a farm), at a convent,
at a boarding school, in a room rented out by private citizens in various
isolated towns and small places, and so on, allowing for $20 to $50 per night
most often, although in some areas that is plainly not possible, and the host
pays $150 per night to stay in a former castle, for example.

First, the city of Milan (not far from Switzerland) is given a quick look,
after the border town of Aosta on the border. The view is totally spectacular
from a baloon of the giant valley below and Alpe mountains, with over 70 small fortified
military castles formerly protecting the border from the North.

In Europe, the people naturally hold onto their traditions and culture, in
the case of Aosta, a spectacular food-fight involving citrus fruit
during carnival, representing a rebellion against a particular monarch from
perhaps 800 years ago.

For those with the Silver Spoon cuisine book or knowing a bit about culinary
traditions in that area, there are bulb mushrooms called truffles costing $50
for a single unit, unearthed by a specialized canine team over a wide spread
of land, used for specific meal concoctions.

The frequent uses of the train, from its modern technology, convenience, speed
(though not cheap) is omnipresent throughout the work, since the distances to
cover are not that great in Europe, being a densely populated land, and nearby
cities.

In terms of Milan, the cathedral is spectacular, once again, with unimaginable
complexity and numbers of sculptures everywhere. Carrying a label of fashion
capital, the people filmed all wear black sunglasses, and are careful with their
appearance. The police or carabinieri, travel by motorcycle, given the small distances,
small streets and limited parking areas of that city. The opera or Rigoletto of Verdi
is given some time here, as well as church organ anthems.

The city of Parma, home of Parmalat, Parma ham and Parma Regianno cheese is given
a tour, namely, the production facilities of the cheese, the processes and more. Curing
a cheese, takes 2 years, amazingly (to dry.)

Modena is an interesting town, with the highest standard or quality of living in
the entire country, and is home to Ferrari, a race track, and the richest individuals
in the country.

Mantova is another artistic town, with high-end outrageously complex frescos, art
and decorations.

Verona is intriguing, with its legacy of having inspired the book Romeo and Juliet,
and the encouraged the passion of youth in past centuries.

The Tyrol area, of the dolomite mountains, Cortina in particular, is of natural
German influence. Here, there's feasible mountain climbing, alpine and cross
country skiing, snowshoeing, at the foot of immense, giant mountains. The caves
are intriguing as well, considering that many solidiers were banished, in a sense,
to freezing temperature caves on sentry duty.

The origins of Venice, it is said, stems from energized citizens running
from Attila the Hun and the invading barbarian armies setting shop on mud islands,
later, associated together as a kingdom of sorts, and necessarily, underwater in most streets
requiring gondolas and boats to travel from place to place. Paradoxically, Venice also
has a certain reputation for brothels, and hedonism, as masks were worn at one time for
6 months in a year, allowing those wearing them to take part in whichever orgies they could
find without fear of retaliation, identification or scandal. As with other cities in Italy,
and in Europe, the February Carnival is a sight to see.

The presenter, in particular, knows exactly which viewer and target market is aimed
for, which is the youth, slightly off-center tourist. More could have been done to score
more points with the older and more professional crowd of viewer, such as more discipline
in refraining from youth antics.

Next, South Italy is shown starting with Rome, using a scooter rented for a very affordable
price. Taking the Colliseum as the starting point, where lions ate the innocent jailed
by the authorities for various motives (often religious), and where 5,000 animals died
and half of 9,000 individual fighters perished over 1/3 of the year, 24 hours a day in
the games, the camera hen moves to the piazza, where youths often show off, and seek
a promiscuous lifestyle, seeking attention from all sorts of people.

The next stop is the Vatican, and religous tourism, with St Peters Square, souvenir shops,
the Basilica, and more. Paradoxically, Europeans are phenomenally liberal and relaxed about
nudity and quasi-nude tourists walk that area gawking at various monuments and attractions,
under the pretense of being "young, hip and wealthy" for example. It's a passport to
individuality and the expression of a sexual self-confidence.

Campagna is an acquired taste for most people. In one case, the mummified remains
of an unknown individual is a pivotal tool for the downtrodden, sick, poor to put
forth requests for what they need to be happy or productive citizens, and for a certain
type of supernatural aspirations and intervention.

Naples seems the most "real" town, by virtue of being the most commercial and
lucrative town, bustling with life in the public markets, with a very significant
and relentless appetite for octupus, sardines, fish, seafood, for example. As with
other towns, a scooter or Vespa is a very convenient vehicle for displacement in
the city being a typical European town tightly packet with narrow streets and rare,
or small, parking spots. Tradition has capped the sorts of pizza to mainly 2, the Marinara
and the veggie, offered to the public, incredibly, as compared to the infinite spins
on the recipe in North America. The beaches are receptive to volleyball and relaxation.

Not far, Pompei and the ruins of the Vesuvius's destruction of 79 AD are open for
visit, not excluding a brothel decorated in honor of Baccus with various colorful
frescos still posted of the time, 2,000 years later.

Salerno is more of a Summer resort, from its lemonade, and Cote d'Azur or French Rivera
atmosphere.

Ostuni, or white city, is a coastal town, receptive to swimmers, boating and sea side
activities. From a culinary standpoint, sea urchins are the key speciality.

Calabria, where the Calabrese hail from, is a town with a high average year-round temperature,
being in the South of Italy. It's agricultural, with tomato, goat milk, pasta and cereal
production. The area is receptive to swimming as well as rural tourism, for those interesting in
spending some days on a farm, getting a feel for that lifestyle. At the same time, it's can
be a potentially very economically poor area, resulting in abandoned homes ruins, the use of
mules for transportation and

kidnappings for random.

Overall, the presentation is helpful in offering hints to viewers of things they might
go for, in a trip to that area, with something for everyone. The host has a sense of humor,
is responsible and intelligent throughout.

In my view is a quite typical travel guide for the eurotrash tourist, pulls all the stops for parties, multicutural experiences, BIASED view of the city and of the Italians (mafia...), politically correct blabber, and little or no geology, science, history of the city. EUROTRASH tourist guide for poor Europeans that think they are rich enough to pick others problems. Maybe the need to belong too???