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Driving in Italy
BEST USES FOR A CAR
Are we negative about driving in Italy? We don't think so, but some of our comments below will make you wonder. We've driven a lot in Italy, and there are lots of places where we think that having a car is the only way to go. It's just that where the driving is toughest, we think the trains are the clear choices. So depending on where you are going in Italy, driving may be a poor choice. Especially if you are traveling between cities, like Rome and Florence or Florence and Venice, we can't imagine using a car, and to us, the trains are only way to go. |
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Driving is best in the scenic areas as opposed to the cities. You want a car where a train just can't get you there, or you can't appreciate the area without "wheels." A fine example is Tuscany. If you want to tour in Tuscany anywhere outside the cities of Florence, Pisa and Siena, you need wheels. The trains just don't cut it for touring countryside Tuscany, or -- with rare exceptions like the Cinque Terre -- countryside anywhere. How would you ever tour the Dolomites (mountains in the Italian Alps) without a car?
There are some exceptions to the idea of needing a car in scenic areas, such as in places where you can use a boat. For example, we do not recommend driving at Lake Como or on the Amalfi Coast, even though you may think those are great areas for a car. And there are scenic areas where the train tracks go but there are no direct road connections, like along the coastline of the Cinque Terre. But for most of countryside Italy, as long as you can keep yourself away from the big urban areas, a car can be a fine choice. |
DRIVES WE LIKE IN ITALY (yes, we've driven all of them)
| For all the driving tours below, do your research, as we're only aiming to give you some starter ideas. Get a good driving atlas -- we like the one from Michelin -- and a folded map that shows all Italy at a glance, for general planning. Remember that driving as well as touring will generally take longer than the distances will suggest, so don't be too aggressive with your itinerary. |
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Just about anywhere in Tuscany, but only if you keep away from the cities. ~And don't think by cities we only mean Florence. Siena is not a great place for driving, since it has a very confusing pattern of streets, and you are not allowed to drive in the city center. Pisa is also quite a good-sized city, so driving there is not a lot of fun.
The Dolomites make for a terrific alpine drive, especially if you're already planning a visit to nothern Italy anywhere near Venice. We especially like the drive between the famous ski resort of Cortina and the city of Bolzano, a really terrific mountain drive. You can tie this into visits to Verona and Lake Garda, both important destinations between Venice and Milan.
In Sicily, you just about have no choice but to have a car ~ We've tried to imagine how you could avoid driving in Sicily, by using the trains, but it just does not work. So the only way we know to go in Sicily is to drive. BUT, the driving can be very stressful in Sicily, since the local drivers tend to be not only aggressive, but highly unpredictable. If you plan to visit Sicily, be sure you do your planning and do your best to stay out of the major metropolitan areas. That means don't drive in Palermo or Catania, and even avoid downtown Messina if you can. The way to enjoy driving in Sicily is to do it in the wide open spaces and very small towns.
Puglia can be a relatively relaxed place to drive, by Italian standards. As always, stay out of the bigger cities, and certainly stay out of Bari with a car. But you can do a lot of driving in Puglia without getting tangled up in big cities.
The Val d'Aosta is a neat area few Americans or Canadians ever visit. Go west and north from the city of Torino (Turin) towards the French and Swiss borders. Alpine scenery and lots of little castles.
Umbria is often cited as an alternative to Tuscany, and we could not agree more. It also makes a great combination with a Tuscany trip. You can stay in west central Umbria for a base and have lots of choices for small towns to visit, including Assisi and Gubbio but many others. You can also tour into the Marches from there.
The Marches -- pronounced "mar-kay" -- is a neat area east of Umbria that is remarkably unvisited by Americans and Canadians. It is mountainous, with lots of secluded towns and villages you can "discover" that no one at home will know anything about. There is also a long seacoast on the Adriatic that offers variety to your Marches tour. If you're looking to get off the tourist track, but stay in central Italy fairly close to the popular route from Rome to Florence to Venice, this area is our top choice.
The Langhe Hills. South and east of Torino and northwest of Genova. Really off the beaten path but a real gem of a small area for driving. Near the town of Alba. This is really serious wine country, and if you're into wine, you must consider this one. Barolo, usually cited as a top, or the top, red wine of Italy, comes from here. This is also serious gastronomic country, as you might expect, so come for both wine and food. But what you also get is what you might think of as a miniature Tuscany, because in a very manageable, small area, you get a beautifully hilly terrain dotted wtih neat little towns, castles, and vineyards that may indeed remind you of Tuscany.
The coast south of Salerno, from Paestum down to Palinuro. Not the most obvious choice or recommendation. But you really do get off the beaten path, and there are some rewarding places to visit, not the least being the fabulous Greek ruins at Paestum at the northern end. |
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CAR-TRAIN COMBOS
| These can be a neat solution to the pros and cons of having a car versus using the trains at various places in Italy. Yes, it does complicate your itinerary to do both trains and a car rental in the same trip. But that's better than forcing yourself to drive where it's a big hassle. |
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Tuscany is where we like to do this most. Much of the reason for this is that we just hate the idea of driving in Rome. And while it seems to make sense to pick up or drop a car in Rome, so as to have the car in Tuscany, doing that means you must not only drive in Rome, but you must navigate into or out of that city. So what we like to do is ride the train between Rome and the town of Chiusi, which is located at the southern end of Tuscany. At Chiusi, you have good options for either picking up or dropping off your car. That permits you to ride the train between Rome and Chiusi, and avoid dealing with a car in Rome.
The same would apply to having a car in Umbria, or the Marches. Just like with Tuscany, you need a car for touring those areas. The town of Chiusi is convenient to Umbria and the Marches. The town of Arezzo can be another good choice for picking up a car, but Arezzo is a bigger town than Chiusi, and we think it's easier to find your way around Chiusi.
As with Rome, we don't like to drive in Florence. So if we used a car for driving in Tuscany, or Umbria, or the Marches, and were going on next to Florence, we would drop the car at the Florence airport, and take a taxi from there into central Florence. Then to go on from Florence to other parts of Italy -- to Venice or the Cinque Terre, for example -- we would use the train. |
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DRIVING TIMES
We just had to mention this, because literally everyone we have ever talked to about a first driving trip in Italy has had an overly optimistic idea of how far they can drive, or how much touring they can realistically do, in a certain amount of time. You can't help yourself, because when you look at a map, the distances are all so small compared to the driving you do at home.
Here's a good example -- the drive from Florence to Venice. It's only about 150 miles, and it's all on a freeway, and they drive fast in Italy. A piece of cake, right? So you figure, 2.5 hours. But you did not reckon on the traffic in and around Florence, or the traffic jam that often occurs on the mountain road between Florence and Bologna, or the congestion that can occur at the tollbooths during rush periods, or the traffic in the greater Venice area. When we hire professional drivers to take people between Florence and Venice, they allow 4-5 hours. First-time Italy drivers often conclude they can take a daytrip to Venice from a villa in Tuscany, but with a 10-hour roundtrip, they end up spending most of the day in their cars.
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Italy is heavily developed and populated within its small area, so you have lots of interruptions to smooth motoring, not to mention the delays that can occur due to navigational issues or finding a place to park. Take Tuscany, for example, a relatively fine place to drive in Italy. But you may be surprised at how far out you must go from the town centers to find parking. In high season, you may have to park nearly a mile outside San Gimignano. Think how much time that adds to your driving tour. |
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| When you plan that driving trip in Italy, add plenty of extra time to what the distances suggest. And if you decide that you can stay at one location in Italy, such as a villa in Tuscany, and drive all over the country, because the distances are so short, get ready for a very stressful vacation. |
ARE YOU READY FOR DRIVING IN ITALY?
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This is a tough question to address. First, the comments we make below do not apply to every trip. So you must pick and choose from the points we make, to see which ones will matter to you. Then there's your experience, which can make a huge difference, especially if you have already driven in Italy, or Greece, or Spain. And then there's what you want to get out of a trip, in terms of adventure and challenge, versus relaxation. |
| Aggressive style of driving. Sure, you drive every day in rush hour traffic, dealing with aggressive jerks, but do you want to do that on vacation, in another culture where the rythm of driving is different, and even subtle differences in driving style and laws require special attentiveness to avoid accidents? What we like to call "road rage" here, with other drivers seeming to be quite upset about your being in their way, is standard procedure on Italian roads, where they see it as a routine part of driving. For many Americans, your concept of courtesy will be seen by Italian drivers as a sign of weakness (we're not joking here).! |
Navigation. This makes driving in Italy a team effort. There should be a designated navigator, who has gotten familiar in advance with the route and the maps. The driver should never be left with the sole responsibility for handling the car and also seeing where to turn to stay on course. Planning on dropping that car in the middle of Rome? We're impressed. Talk about finding a needle in a haystack. Just be sure you know how to navigate to the rental office. See our comments on why we ride the trains in and out of Rome, and use a town in Tuscany for picking up and dropping the car.
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| Driving in any urban area, you will find yourself trying to adjust to the unfamiliar rhythm of traffic, trying to avoid other cars, see the traffic lights and signs, and at the same time, plan to be in just the proper lane for making that turn coming up...or that you just missed. We've been there, heading out of town on the wrong road and spending lots of time correcting our mistakes, because we failed to navigate properly, even with two people watching the signs. But get upset about it, make too quick a lane change, and that's just when you'll have an accident. |
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Parking. No matter how good a driver you are, and how good you are at finding your way around, you still need to park sooner or later. You saw our comment above about not recommending driving on the Amalfi Coast. Well, parking had more than a little to do with that. We remember once getting desperate about where to park a car in the town of Amalfi, thinking we would never be able to stop and get something to eat. |
| A fender-bender can ruin your day, or worse. This is not a pleasant thought, but you really need to keep it in mind. A minor accident, something you might not even think of as an accident, can really mess up your vacation. You can get stuck dealing with local officials, who may want to see you pay right there for some damages, or find yourself in front of a local magistrate who speaks little or no English, and see your itinerary just dissolve, along with the cost of lost hotel reservations and even missed flights. This is not a reason not to drive where driving is important to your vacation. But it is a reason not to drive where driving is a bad idea. |
RESERVING A VEHICLE
For car rentals, our recommendation for a booking source is simple, and it's the only one we have used ourselves for the past 8 years. The name is Auto Europe, based in Portland, Maine. This is a strong endorsement, but no, we do not get any commission or fee for referring you here to Auto Europe. Auto Europe is a broker, which means that the vehicles they provide are supplied by some other company. Their rates come pretty close to the best you're likely to find, and when you talk to their sales reps, they're not only knowledgable, but friendly.
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The cars provided by Auto Europe come primarily from Europcar or Hertz or Avis. So why don't we go directly to one of those major car rental companies in the first place? The main reason is that we need choices, because different companies offer rentals in different locations, and they also offer different options for vehicle types. And we get a better set of options from Auto Europe. We can call Auto Europe to learn which companies offer cars at a certainlocation. That cuts down our time to work out the best rental arrangements, and it also gives us a chance to compare prices and other options. For example, in a particular town, Auto Europe may be able to get a cheaper rental, or a more desirable car model, from Europcar than they can get from Hertz, |
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Another thing we like about Auto Europe is that we don't have to deal with add-ons. They quote the full price right upfront. . When we call other rental companies, their prices seem lower at first, but that's only because they give their quotes without the cost of insurance added in. |
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