What's a nice English word?

So, I've been posting mostly about NYC so far, and I'm hoping to do it as often as possible, but let me take a little break to speak about something more related to foreigners abroad and learning English.

As you might have noticed, I am not English mother tongue, so I'm learning a lot of new words day by day, and sometimes it's overwhelming.. Fortunately, from now and then you find a REALLY NICE WORD, and by nice I mean something that sounds fun, or has a fun meaning.

So the word I want to talk about today would be:

BALONEY

How could NEW YORK CITY be even MORE LIVABLE?

I know I've just arrived in the city and it might sound a little arrogant to try to IMPROVE NEW YORK CITY, but come on, I am Italian.. We do love to take a stand against or for any kind of discussion, starting from the last soccer match, ending with tomorrow's weather. If you're proved to be true many times you get to become a politician; if you are almost never true but you say it really loud, you become president.

Anyways, back to the topic, I noticed that many of the blogs on NYC (rightfully) praise New York as a wonderful city to live in mainly because of:

• a lot of walkable neighborhoods (see here) - check out this website, it's kind of amazing:  http://walkshed.org/nyc
• a lot of green areas (a serious article here);
• etc..

Unfortunately, though, I don't think there is yet a culture of BICYCLES..

Is there something like the SUPERBOWL in ITALY?

Let me be frank: NO.

Since tomorrow is the big game's day, I tried to think really hard about some similar tradition we have in Italy. I couldn't come up with much, and I was somewhat sorry about that. I generally like these weird situations in which the sense of belonging of some people becomes really really strong, for a couple of hours.

The only thing that would compare is the World Cup final (of soccer, obviously). A lot of people get just nuts about it, and I would say the general feeling is similar to the Super Bowl. Only with less Buffalo wings.

Why isn't there a STARBUCKS IN ITALY (yet)?

I guess time has come to talk about coffee. It is a hot topic (indeed! Sorry, bad joke), and let me say especially for Italians. Coffee for Italians is something like saudade for Brazilian, is the smile of a person you miss. The first thing most Italians do once back from a journey is getting a coffee. True story. Actually I should not get that sentimental, let me start by the very beginning: how would I describe coffee culture in Italy? Bullet-points!

• coffee in Italy means espresso - it is really a couple of millimeters, way less than what you can get at any American cafe - it is really intense and concentrated, almost as dense as honey;  
• it is served in a ceramic cup (not even in the outskirts of the worst Italian town would you find a paper cup);
• most guys get it at the counter, it takes less than 2 minutes to prepare and less than 20 second to drink;
• it costs something between 0.90 and 1.50 euros (in normal places - i.e. not in Piazza San Marco in Venice, or in front of the Colosseum);
• in summer you would sit in the tables and stand there chatting, but NOBODY WORKS IN THE CAFE', in Italy;