[Idyllchat] Rome to Florence

[Mary Knapp]

We haven't visited Rome, but we would suggest allowing plenty of time the day you drop off your car in Florence.  We had an anxiety-ridden experience.  

Like many big cities, Florence has lots of one-way streets.  On the day we traveled there to drop off the car, there was a big accident on the highway with delays and detours (figured out by following other cars! on faith! on winding local roads) so we were already cutting the time close.  When we got to Florence, we had to top off the gas tank--no prob.  But when we got close to the rental agency, it was one of those "you can't get there from here" events.  We could see the Avis agency, but couldn't figure out how to get down that street--one ways, etc.  We finally parked the car, ran with suitcases to the agency, quickly explained the problem,  ran back to the car with the agent (God bless him) b/c he had to be able to find the car, and then ran very fast to the RR station, up many stairs, and just made our train to Switzerland.   We get out of breath just thinking about it--and we can laugh about it now, but it makes Switzerland, with public transport to the airport, along with checking baggage through the day before, seem like real heaven.

Other than that, we loved Tuscany, and except for driving into Florence and Siena, where we somehow ended up in someone's vineyard for a few minutes, we found driving around very easy.  You will love it there.

Walt and Mary Knapp
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.dca.net/pipermail/idyllchat/attachments/20061129/1b04ea0a/attachment.htm