In città

By the eighth chapter the course has given you enough to find your way round a town, ask where something is, and understand most of the answer.

The town itself

città is town or city, and it does not change in the plural: one città, two città. That accent on the last syllable is why. Any Italian noun that ends in a stressed vowel stays the same in the plural, which is a rule worth learning once.

strada is road or street, and indirizzo is address. Then the places: scuola is school, ufficio is office, ospedale is hospital, chiesa is church, banca is bank and negozio is shop. hotel needs no help.

bar does. An Italian bar is where you have your morning coffee standing up, a pastry, and a glass of water. It is open from dawn and it is not primarily about alcohol. Anyone who treats andiamo al bar as an invitation to drink at eight in the morning has understood the word and missed the country.

Getting there

macchina and auto are both car. macchina is the everyday word and also means machine; auto is short for automobile and slightly more formal. treno is train and aereo is plane. You travel in treno, in macchina, in aereo, with in rather than English's "by", which is the kind of small preposition choice that marks a learner out.

biglietto is ticket, and it is the same word for a train ticket, a cinema ticket and a banknote. Most Italian stations still want you to validate a paper biglietto before boarding, and the fine for forgetting is real.

Which way

sinistra is left and destra is right. You turn a sinistra or a destra. vicino is near and lontano is far, and both take da when you say what they are near to or far from: vicino alla stazione, lontano da qui.

Be careful with dritto when you meet it: straight on. It sounds like destra, and a hurried listener mixes them.

The thing to take away: in directions, the small words carry the meaning. a, da and in decide whether you are going somewhere, coming from it, or travelling by it, and a direction given without them is a list of places.