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Cosmic
is a company dedicated to offer reliable trips at affordable
prices. This is our site dedicated to discover Italy and its
wonderful cities: Visit Rome the famous eternal city, Venice the
mysterious city built on 177 islands 150 canals and 400 bridges,
Florence and its artistic beauties, Pompeii the famous Roman
city destroyed by the eruption of the volcano Vesuvius in 79
A.C., Verona the monumental city setting of Shakespeare's
masterpiece "Romeo and Juliet", the leaning tower of Pisa and
much more. We offer several cultural trips with fixed departure
dates and also some comprehensive tours with daily departures,
as well as hotels reservations, car rental, cheap airfares,
discount vacation rental and cruises, enjoy !
Italy Travel Guide:
Of all European countries, Italy is perhaps the hardest to
classify. It is a modern, industrialized nation. It is the
harbinger of style, its designers leading the way with each
season's fashions. But it is also, to an equal degree, a
Mediterranean country, with all that that implies. Agricultural
land covers much of the country, a lot of it, especially in the
south, still owned under almost feudal conditions. In towns and
villages all over the country, life grinds to a halt in the
middle of the day for a siesta, and is strongly family-oriented,
with an emphasis on the traditions and rituals of the Catholic
Church which, notwithstanding a growing scepticism among the
country's youth, still dominates people's lives here to an
immediately obvious degree.
Above all Italy provokes reaction. Its people are volatile,
rarely indifferent to anything, and on one and the same day you
might encounter the kind of disdain dished out to tourist masses
worldwide, and an hour later be treated to embarrassingly
generous hospitality. If there is a single national
characteristic, it's to embrace life to the full: in the
hundreds of local festivals taking place across the country on
any given day, to celebrate a saint or the local harvest; in the
importance placed on good food; in the obsession with clothes
and image; and above all in the daily domestic ritual of the
collective evening stroll or passeggiata - a sociable affair
celebrated by young and old alike in every town and village
across the country.
Italy only became a unified state in 1861 and, as a result,
Italians often feel more loyalty to their region than the nation
as a whole - something manifest in different cuisines, dialects,
landscape and often varying standards of living. There is also,
of course, the country's enormous cultural legacy: Tuscany alone
has more classified historical monuments than any country in the
world; there are considerable remnants of the Roman Empire all
over the country, notably of course in Rome itself; and every
region retains its own relics of an artistic tradition generally
acknowledged to be among the world's richest.
Yet there's no reason to be intimidated by the art and
architecture. If you want to lie on a beach, there are any
number of places to do it: development has been kept relatively
under control, and many resorts are still largely the preserve
of Italian tourists. Other parts of the coast, especially in the
south of the country, are almost entirely undiscovered. Beaches
are for the most part sandy, and doubts about the cleanliness of
the water have been confined to the northern part of the
Adriatic coast and the Riviera. Mountains, too, run the
country's length - from the Alps and Dolomites in the north
right along the Apennines, which form the spine of the peninsula
- and are an important reference-point for most Italians. Skiing
and other winter sports are practised avidly, and in the five
national parks, protected from the national passion for hunting,
wildlife of all sorts thrives.
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