Blog #19 - Driving in Italy

Italians are some of the nicest people I have ever met - until they get behind the wheel of a car that is.  Actually, driving in Italy was not as crazy as reputed to be.  The Autostrada or toll highway between major centres is very efficient and in great shape everywhere we went.  The country highways are well maintained and much easier to drive on than some of the pot-holed roads we have to face in Canada.  Although in general the country roads and city streets are much narrower than we are used to, most of the cars on the roads are small compacts.

We ordered a Volkswagon Jetta from Magliorre car rental company under the advice of our travel agent Louise from the CAA office in Orleans.  When went to pick up our car in Venice, we were told that they were overbooked and that we were to be given an upgrade to a Fiat Doblo.  I told the agent that I hoped the Doblo wasn't a big car because I understood that the roads were narrow in Italy.  He said don't worry, you're tall so it will be perfect for you. 

Well, as it turned out the Doblo is quite large - in fact Sandy affectionately referred to it as the Bread Truck.  I started out driving the Doblo on the Autostrada from Venice 400 Km to Courmayeur in the Italian Alps, so by the time we arrived, I was quite familiar with the car and able to drive comfortably in the smaller city streets.  It actually was nice to have the extra interior room, but there were a few times when it was tight passing other cars on narrow winding roads.  By the end of our trip we had put 2600 Km on the Doblo without any close calls.  So I thought we should it St. Doblo because I felt like it protected us very well throughout our trip.

Here are some pictures of our Doblo, the roads we drove on and some of the sights we saw as we drove by.

When I pulled up to our hotel in Courmayeur to load our luggage, Andrew came up to the door of our Doblo and placed an order for two loaves of white bread and one loaf of rye, since we had been calling the car, "the bread truck".

On his drive from Lake Como to Courmayeur, Andrew drove through the wrong gate at the toll booth and didn't pick up a voucher to indicate his starting point.  When he got off the highway, he had to pay the maximum fee of 60 Euros, when it should have cost about 15 Euros.  We paid about 100 Euros in Autostrada toll fees throughout our trip.  It was worth it, because we did take the side roads a few times and they took over twice as long to go the same distance.

On our last night in Italy, we took a taxi into Rome and spotted this Lambourghini.