Driving in Italy.

We had heard over the years that one should not attempt driving in Italy- Italian drivers are crazy, they drive too fast, they take risky chances, etc.  But my very thorough husband researched this topic and asked Maven Joan's husband Ted about driving  in Italy-he reassured us that we would be safe.  Since we wanted to travel around the Tuscan countryside, one needs to have a car so we decided to follow Ted's advice and rented a car in Bologna.  I cannot drive a standard (it is much more expensive to rent an automatic) and I hate driving in general so I was the navigator and Jerry was the pilot. Once we drove onto the streets of Bologna, we felt completely at ease.  All of the horror stories we had heard disappeared as we leisurely drove on country roads or on the highway.  It was a piece of cake. 

Here is some advice:
You must rent your car in North America and pay in either American or Canadian funds.  The price is high because you must take the insurance.
Here is the website with all of the information regarding car rental and driving in Italy:
www.slowtrav.com/italy/driving/index.htm
This website has detailed aspects of Italian driving with several internal links.
For example:  make sure you know if your car takes gas or diesel when you rent it.  Do not rely on gas station attendants to know about your car.  Learn how to ask for gas in Italian.  It helps.

Maps and directions:
Download the European maps onto your GPS.  We used this often while trying to navigate our way from one city to another.  Sometimes the GPS will not locate a particular address.  In this case, I got a travel package for my IPhone.  The GPS device in it works really well and the little green bouncing ball will indicate if you are going in the right or wrong direction.

Have fun exploring!