Lorella's Strengths
My unquenchable desire to travel and to discover beauty
The need I feel deep inside to share the riches within gradually gained
Very good organizational skills and time optimization
Travellers feel how much I love my job, which enables them to experience their tour fully.
I do my best to make things easier, to reduce language and/ or culture barriers where I feel this is required to make the group’s experience more complete, so that each member will be able to put it in the drawer of strong memories (I happened to translate Italian guided visits into the group’s language during half a day or a full day).
I am not an art historian and hence I am not so knowledgeable about history and art as a tourist guide, but I am well aware that among my tasks I am supposed to pave the way for tourist guides, on the one hand by adding value in advance to their precious and irrreplaceable role in helping us decode and gain a deeper insight into a given place, sight, or works of art and on the other giving pieces of advice to the guides on how to approach the group, whom I have had more time to get to know since the tour started (I inform them either on difficulties or impairments – if any – or about specific interests, so that the tour might be tailor-made for them).
Since I want to point out that tours in Italy are also food and wine tours, I offer the groups the pleasure to get to know what they will
have at every meal by previously translating the menus for every meal during the tour (I copy the Italian dish name and then I translate into and/or explain it in English) and I give them a printout, as my personal gift to each member, so that they might appreciate every single ingredient of a given dish, better organize their nutrition during the day and remember also the food and wine experience even when the tour is over (this gift of mine is usually highly welcome, especially because menus are often not translated or when a translation is given, it is sometimes - shamefully – of a very poor quality)
My past experiences and my in-depth knowledge of several Italian regions we drive through, sometimes enable me to recommend some unscheduled visits for unique, very enriching and once in a lifetime experiences that the group cannot miss!
Quick problem solving skills, because when you least expect it, there is always something unexpected round the corner
I live near the PIACENZA-ANCONA line, one of the main lines of the Italian railway network; hence, I seldom waste time in waiting for connecting trains and I can join the group at the established meeting point more quickly.
I am available both for incoming and for outgoing, with adequate advance notice.
I am also available for food and wine tours in Italy and abroad (I worked as a liaison interpreter at several editions of The Mirabilia Network connected to UNESCO world heritage sites, for which I prepared technical glossaries).