Coffee Break Italian
Two very different Italian journeys, written as diaries by the people making them. Twenty lessons of real Italian, unpicked line by line with Francesca and Mark.
See the summer price £79 / $105 until Tuesday 28th July · lifetime access · yours to downloadThere is a version of your next trip where you order confidently, follow the reply, and end up in a conversation you did not plan. That version starts now, not at the airport.
Travel Diaries works because it gives you something to follow. Each lesson is built around a diary entry written by someone on a real journey, in natural Italian, about an ordinary day. Not a textbook dialogue, not a list of phrases for the airport. Just a person describing what happened, the way they would to a friend.
Then Francesca and Mark take that entry apart with you, line by line, so nothing goes past you unexplained.
Both seasons, in full. Each follows a different set of people on a different kind of trip, so you get two registers of Italian rather than more of the same.
Giulia and her friend Paolo travel through Tuscany by train, and Giulia writes up each day: the towns, the food, the small frustrations and the language that gets you through them.
Simone and his wife Anna head to the mountains for a week of winter activities. A completely different register: cold weather, mountain guides and a part of Italy most visitors never see.
Here is a real sample from one of Simone's diary entries in Season 2. He and Anna are on a winter holiday in Trentino-Alto Adige and are heading off for a day on the Marmolada glacier.
Dopo esserci rilassati a Cortina, eravamo pronti per una nuova avventura: una bella escursione sulla Marmolada, il gruppo montuoso più alto delle Dolomiti! Prima di tutto, abbiamo incontrato la nostra guida, Luca, fuori dal nostro albergo. Poi, siamo andati insieme in macchina fino al punto di partenza dell’escursione: da qui in poi si va avanti solo a piedi!
La giornata era meravigliosa: il sole splendeva e l’aria era fresca e pulita. Dopo le prime ore di cammino eravamo già un po’ stanchi, quindi ci siamo fermati per una mezz’oretta a prendere fiato. All’improvviso, però, si è alzato un forte vento freddo, e in poco tempo il cielo si è coperto di nuvole scure…
If you can follow most of that, with a word or two you would need to look up, the course is pitched right for you. The lesson notes and the audio explain every line of it, so nothing stays a mystery.
The same three steps, 20 times over. Simple enough to keep going with, thorough enough to move you on.
A page of real written Italian, the kind a person actually writes about their own day. You read it first, and see how much you get.
Francesca and Mark go through the whole entry: the vocabulary, the grammar and the turns of phrase that make it sound like a native speaker wrote it.
The video pronunciation practice replays the text with a pause after every phrase, so you can repeat it properly rather than just recognising it.
Travel Diaries is written for intermediate learners, roughly B1 to B2. You should be comfortable with the present and the past, and ready to spend time with longer stretches of real Italian rather than single sentences.
If you have worked through the middle seasons of Coffee Break Italian, this sits neatly on top. If you are earlier than that, it will feel like hard work, and we would rather tell you now than take your money.
One payment for both seasons of the Travel Diaries and every resource that comes with them. Yours for good.
Prefer to pay in US dollars? Join for $105
Instant access to all 20 lessons. No subscription, nothing to cancel.
20 lessons, over 10 hours, and a journey worth taking. At £79 / $105 until Tuesday 28th July.
Offer closes Tuesday 28th July 2026 at 23:59 BST
Start the journeyNo. Travel Diaries stands on its own. It assumes some Italian, not any particular course.
20 lessons, over 10 hours of audio, plus the notes and pronunciation practice. Most people do one or two a week. There is no schedule and no deadline once you are in.
Forever. It is a one-off payment, and you can download the audio, notes and video to keep.
You can, both seasons are sold separately in the Academy. At this price the two together cost less than one season normally does, so the bundle is the sensible choice.
The audio lessons are the heart of it, and there is a lot more around them: the written notes for every episode, the full diary texts, and the video pronunciation practice, all in one place in the Academy.
Everything is digital and available to download the moment you join, so we do not offer refunds. If you are unsure whether the level is right, email team@coffeebreaklanguages.com before you buy and we will give you an honest answer.
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Photography: Zuoranyi · Daniel Seßler · Luca Micheli · Casper Westera (Unsplash)