Driving in Italy

Tuesday, May 29

-Pic1:Which lane do you take when you have to read this set of signs from a distance of 500´?

-Pic2: This sign tells you that the street will make a weird turn around what seems to be a block, a building or whatever else your imagination tells you.

Have you ever been told a joke, seen movies or heard about the way Italians drive? Well, if you have driven or at least witnessed how people in Latin America drive then you can have a pretty good idea of what I’m talking about: chaotic. Before leaving Miami we decided to be braver this time around and rent a car in Italy thinking this would give us the opportunity to drive to different Tuscan towns at our own pace and enjoy the scenic routes without having to rush to catch a train or bus. Tuesday morning we attempted to leave Rome at a decent time (right after breakfast) in our Opel Astra and head out to beautiful and sunny Tuscany. Since it was raining badly in Rome we left our luggage in the hotel, walked about 5 blocks from the hotel to the car rental counter at the main train station and picked-up the car 3 blocks from the station. Our goal was to avoid the 8 block walk with our heavy bags in the rain. At the Avis counter we were given the pertinent maps for Rome, Karina (as the good planner she is) had brought from Miami 2 maps with the major Italian roads, the previous night I had psychologically prepared for the driving experienced, and had prayed 2 rosaries , and Marelys had learned how to curse in Italian in case we needed this sort of skill. So as you see we were as prepared as we could for the road experience. Well, I’m exaggerating a little bit. We only had the maps and the psychological preparation with us.
Lesson #1 when driving in Rome: 95%f the streets are one way (once again I am exaggerating. I must have gotten it from the Italians). But it is true that a lot and I really mean a lot of streets are one way streets. So even though we made an L to get to the car (5 blocks going north-south along one street and 3 blocks going east-west on a second street) we had to make a WW followed by an S before we could get back to the hotel. What we walked in 7 minutes took close to 15 minutes by car. At the Avis counter we were also given directions on how to get out of the city and into the "Autostrada" or expressway. Just take a wild guess, how much time do you think were we told it would take us to get to the Autostrada?? 20 minutes. You are doing very well!!
Ok, let me continue with lesson #2: develop your eyesight. You need to be someone close to the 6 million dollar man or bionic women to be able to read the street names as most of them are just a plaque made out of stone in a somewhat white or grayish color with the name of the street engraved. And on top of it they are mounted into the walls of a building that are basically the same color. I know I can only speak for myself so I can only tell you that for me it was nearly impossible to read the name of the street we were in, to determine where the heck we were on the map. Thank god we had Marelys, who happens to have excellent eyesight and could make some sense of the street names.
Lesson # 3: develop your sixth sense or intuition skills. Many times we found ourselves driving and then noticing that the street would split into 3 directions ahead of us. You do see a bunch of confusing signs at a distance (exactly at the point where you have to make the turn and it is too late to make a decision). So where do you go? Left? Right? Keep on going straight? This is why I say you have to develop a sixth sense. And even with that you are bound to make the wrong turn, choose the wrong direction to divert into and end up in a loop or having to go around 20,000 one way streets to make it to the same point again and make the right turn the second, third, or fourth time around.
Instead of 20 minutes it took us about 1-1.5 hours to get to the Autostrada. And the only reason we made it in this time frame is because we had 2 great co-pilots. By the way, Marelys never had to use the cursing skills….

Now, would I do it again? Absolutely. It was an entertaining and amusing experience. You just can’t stress about it. And at the end it allowed us to achieve our goals. We survived the experience, had fun at it and thank God had no problems.