This is the Untold Italy travel podcast and you are listening to episode number 159.

Ciao at all and benvenuti to Untold Italy, the travel podcast where you go to the towns and

villages, mountains and lakes, hills and coastlines of

Bella Italia. Each week your host, Katie Clark, takes you on a journey in search of magical

landscapes, history, culture, wine, gelato, and of course, a whole lot of pasta. If you're dreaming

of Italy and planning future adventures

there, you've come to the right place.

Ciao friends. Today's episode is a bit different because it's not so much focused on

inspiration for your Italy trips. In this episode, we're going to get a little bit practical.

And it's especially for those of you who maybe haven't done a lot of international travel

or haven't done some for some time or it's your first trip to Italy. Now I'm going to let you know

some of the more annoying things about travel in Italy, namely scams and I'm going to give you

some strategies to avoid them. The purpose of this episode is not to scare or alarm you because

Italy is generally a very, very safe country to travel in. But I'm recording this to help

you to be alert and give you some strategies for avoiding the small number of tricksters that like

to take advantage of visitors who are understandably enjoying the scenery and the wonder all around them.

Now, according to the world population review, Italy is one of the most visited countries in the

world, coming in at number five with over 64 million visitors a year, which, to give you some

context, is about the same number of people that visit the United States from abroad each year.

And where there are large numbers of people, you'll usually find the odd scammer.

And that's true of most big cities around the world. And I can certainly tell you that

despite being very well travelled, I've been scammed in just about every country I've been

...