{"id":3120,"date":"2014-06-19T13:11:52","date_gmt":"2014-06-19T11:11:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rickzullo.com\/?p=3120"},"modified":"2016-06-28T15:33:13","modified_gmt":"2016-06-28T13:33:13","slug":"renting-a-car-in-italy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/renting-a-car-in-italy\/","title":{"rendered":"Renting a Car in Italy"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"cablecar\"
Our baby enjoying the view.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In an article last year, I had advised\u00a0against renting a car in Italy in favor of public transportation only.\u00a0 After my recent blog tour, I\u2019d like to amend that statement with two qualifications.<\/p>\n

First, yes, if you\u2019re ONLY going to be in major cities, then a car might be more trouble than it\u2019s worth. Second, if you want to get off the proverbial beaten path, then you MUST have a car. Truly, this is where you\u2019ll get to encounter that elusive \u201cReal Italy.\u201d<\/p>\n

During our five week romp down the Italian peninsula, we used a combination of the following public transportation methods: airplane, fast train, slow train, tram, subway, funicular, local bus, taxi, ferry boat, donkey cart, and a cable car to get to the top of Erice (see photo at right).<\/p>\n

But in addition to these, we also rented a car twice\u2014once in Tuscany\/Umbria, and once in Sicily. \u00a0And our trip was much better for it.<\/p>\n

There are some real advantages of renting a car in Italy, the most important of which is that you can reach places that trains and buses simply don\u2019t go.\u00a0 For example, we stayed at an amazing agriturismo in Umbria called Il Fontanaro.\u00a0 One of the reasons that it\u2019s so amazing is that it\u2019s set among the green hills and rolling vineyards, giving you a postcard view in every direction.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Obviously, bus service in these idyllic areas is cumbersome, at best.\u00a0 It could take half a day to reach a neighboring village that\u2019s only 30 minutes away by car.\u00a0 From Fontanaro, we went to both Montepulciano and Cortona, and it couldn\u2019t have been easier.<\/p>\n

\"renting
Paradise can’t be reach by train.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Not to mention there are some incredible places right here near Rome that can only be reached by car.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the freedom from fixed schedules and random transportation strikes.\u00a0 Anyone who has traveled within Italy knows that the posted timetables for trains and buses are really just approximations\u2026somebody\u2019s best guess.<\/p>\n

Then once you\u2019ve lugged all of your gear onto the binario<\/em> (train platform), an announcement comes over the loudspeaker (in Italian only) stating that there has been a platform change, and now you have just two minutes to scramble down the stairs with your luggage, find the new platform, then mule your suitcases back up the stairs on the other side of the station.\u00a0 No wonder I usually lose a few pounds when travelling in Italy, despite all the pasta and gelato!<\/p>\n

Renting a Car in Italy<\/h2>\n

Which brings me to another point.\u00a0 Travelling with an equipment intensive infant, we discovered that loading up a car is easier than hefting massive suitcases onto trains and buses, often to the chagrin of fellow passengers.\u00a0 Then once aboard the bus or train, you must jostle for position, take care not to block the aisles, and then get everything in place to quickly unload when you reach your destination.\u00a0 A few times we barely got the baby off the train in time as the whistle blew.<\/p>\n

\"there
Sciopero–it can really spoil your mood.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When riding in the car, our baby sleeps like\u2026well, a baby.\u00a0 She enjoys the train, too, but when somebody suddenly shouts, or the train itself makes a loud noise, an interrupted nap becomes a full day\u2019s aggravation for mom and dad.\u00a0 Not a problem when she\u2019s cocooned in her car seat, where she\u2019s been known to doze for two hours at a stretch.<\/p>\n

Depending on how many people are travelling together, renting a car in Italy can also be a good bargain.\u00a0 For example, a high-speed train ticket from Florence to Rome costs 43.00 \u20ac per person.\u00a0 Meanwhile, we paid just 22.00 \u20ac a day for our rental car, not including a small extra charge for the baby seat. \u00a0 And while fuel is certainly more expensive in Italy than in the U.S., the cars here get much better gas mileage, so it\u2019s almost a wash.\u00a0 Not quite, but almost when you do the math (and I did it\u2026twice).<\/p>\n

Of course there are some disadvantages.\u00a0 When we arrived in Modica, my stellar navigating skills (mis)guided Jessica up a steep narrow \u201cstreet\u201d (if you can call it that\u2026the hallway in our apartment is more spacious) that eventually got us trapped high up in the village, wedged between a church and an apartment, with no way to turn around.\u00a0 It took us half an hour and about two liters of olive oil to grease the walls of the buildings in order to dislodge our vehicle from the 16th-century structures and slowly inch back down the hill in reverse.<\/p>\n

The only other disadvantage can be\u00a0parking..\u00a0 Doing a little research on this ahead of time is a smart move.\u00a0 Email your hotel and ask them where to park and how much it might cost.\u00a0 As I mentioned, in the bigger cities this can be a real nightmare.\u00a0 But in the smaller towns of Tuscany, Umbria, and Sicily, we had no problems.\u00a0 And we never had to pay for parking.<\/p>\n

It should be noted that I\u2019m mostly talking about travelling<\/em> from point to point by car.\u00a0 If you\u2019re going to be doing some serious touring, seeing the sites, drinking wine, etc., be smarter still and hire a driver.\u00a0 You\u2019re on vacation, after all.\u00a0 Not only will it relieve your stress, but a good driver will know the best spots to stop for lunch, and have plenty of useful information to give you along the way, making for an enjoyable ride.<\/p>\n

I had a great day with a driver in Chianti, and I\u2019ll have more to say about this in a future post. \u00a0But the point I want to make now is that renting a car in Italy can actually be a smart choice from the point of view of freedom, convenience, and even price. \u00a0Consider all the advantages and then decide for yourself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In an article last year, I had advised\u00a0against renting a car in Italy in favor of public transportation only.\u00a0 After my recent blog tour, I\u2019d like to amend that statement with two qualifications. First, yes, if you\u2019re ONLY going to be in major cities, then a car might be more trouble than it\u2019s worth. Second, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6147,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94,43,4,66,245],"tags":[246,153,59,195,107],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3120"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}