Italy: Expectations

Italy comes with its own ideas and stereotypes, as mentioned in the Cliches post. I expect to find pasta. I expect to find pizza. I expect to find art and music and Italian men arguing in the street using their hands in unorthodox ways to express themselves. All of these are expectations we get from television and movies.
I carry that baggage with me when I begin to think about packing and traveling to Spoleto, Rome, Venice, and all of the Italian places I plan to discover over the course of five weeks. I expect to travel by train most of the places I go. I expect, and am afraid, that all the people there will speak only Italian and will not know much English (though I have been told that they know better English than some Americans.) I expect that it will be hot, however, it has been warned that weather is quite fickle this time of the year, so I'm expecting a Georgia weather type on steroids.
I believe that Italy will be loud and filled with breathtaking cobblestones and rivers in the middle of towns where gondolas actually take people from one place to the next. I believe that Italy will have scenery that Americans can only dream of seeing: actual mountains that are not covered in billboards and trees that are not "just for decoration" but actually are what people travel to see.
I expect to see museums and architecture that we only see in art books. I expect to be blown away by beauty at every turn.