cjr071

Hi there, I am planning a trip to Italy in Fall of 2016 and will be renting a car for the first week of my trip. I plan to rent a car from Florence (at airport) and will be driving to Cinque Terre for 3 nights (the place I reserved does have parking) and then we are driving to Northern Tuscany, to another place that does have parking as well. Any suggestions for driving? I heard Cinque Terre can be tough to drive around but we plan to park the car at the villa and then will not use it again until we leave for Tuscany. Does anyone know is the GPS (either via the car, or phone) will speak English (yes dumb question!). I'm not worried about the aggressive driving I hear about Italy, but moreso worry about not being able to understand the directions if not in English. *I do plan to take some Italian before I go. Thanks for any tips!

macanimals

I've never had a rental GPS that wasn't able to 'speak' in english, there are always language options. We drove to the Cinque Terre on our first visit back in 2000 but have always used trains subsequently as they are the way to go.

My impression of italian drivers includes the fact that they, like a lot of other europeans are aggressive but very attentive---no coffee cups, cell phones (much) or distractions. Just keep an eye on your rear view mirror and let them pass.

Huggy

If you can drive a car, you can drive in Italy. Sure, some roads are narrow and crowded but Italian drivers are usually very competent but bold. More important can you drive a stick shift?

A GPS is helpful but I always have a paper map of the region along to use as a companion. It is critical that you enter they correct spelling of your destination in the GPS. That is why I have the companion map.

You can change the GPS language to English before you start. If you are concerned, purchase a GPS before you arrive in Italy. Make sure it is loaded with a European map. I purchased mine in Amsterdam at an electronic store.

Drive with confidence and you will be fine.

hetismij2

As others have said you can set the language of a GPS to any language, but it may not be very clear how you do that. If you use your phone for navigation you obviously already have it set to English, but need to download the maps to your phone at home to avoid running up an unnecessary data bill.

Be careful of the restricted zones in Florence and other Italian cities. Have a look at http://www.italybeyondtheobvious.com...with-ztl-zones.

patandhank

We rented a car in Venice and did 3 weeks in Tuscany in April 2015. We own a Tom Tom and take it with us on all trips where we're not familiar with the routes (overseas and U.S.). Turned out the car we got also had GPS even though we didn't request it. As others have said, you can choose your language and we didn't find it difficult to do so. Simply take some time and sit in a parking lot and play with the features.

No issues driving. We found there were many more speed cameras in Italy than other countries we had been in; however, we just paid attention.

ZTL areas are well marked. Keep your eyes open and you'll see them. Our hotel in Florence was in a ZTL zone, but because we had them handle the car, they arranged the necessary clearances and we were good to go.

bvlenci

I use Google Navigator for GPS, and it always speaks Italian to me, no matter what country I'm in. It uses the language you've specified for your phone. My husband uses a Garmin, which we never take with us when traveling, but it would also remain Italian no matter where we were.

vincenzo32951

Just one warning: Some rental agencies don't guarantee GPS -- they stipulate that it "depends in availability." It can happen that you'll show up and they'll say they have no GPS units available. It happened to us. We bought a map, and everything worked out OK.

Do plan on parking the car when you get to CT and getting around on foot or via public transportation (ferry, mostly).

nytraveler

I would not characterize Italian drivers as aggressive. I would call them assertive.

They generally are good drivers (driving test is MUCH harder than in the US) and they are confident but do follow rules. Granted they have little patience for people who dither or drive in the left lane, etc, but IMHO if one is not a confident driver one should not drive in europe. Also one should be good at parallel parking. head in mall parking is very rare and you need to be able to parallel park in a space barely larger than the car - on either side. Also be sure to fold mirrors in before leaving the car to avoid them being scraped off.

greg

The issue with directions, such as sign, would not be the Italian language. It can be the volume of data you have to process in an instant such as these:
http://www.littlestuff.co.uk/blog/wp...ts-paestum.jpg
c8.alamy.com/comp/ANTDN9/mass-of-road-signage-piazza-grande-montepulciano-tuscany-italy-ANTDN9.jpg

Or info that is more confusing than helpful; which way to Siena? http://www.florencewebguide.com/imag...n-italy-01.jpg

Sometimes you are presented with both: stacks of signs with same destination pointing both ways. While those with infinite time to travel might not have issue going either way, if you want to get to the destination by certain time, study the route beforehand. Try to find road conditions. Two years ago in fall, we drove from Umbria into Southern Tuscany, but a key section of the road was just washed out a few days before due to heavy rain. We had to do a long detour in the mountains in the rain in fog in darkness on route we have not considered.

cjr071

Thanks everyone...this is all really good info! Does anyone know how I go about updating my maps/GPS with my iphone 6? Is there a specific app for European (Italy) maps I need to download? I also came across a pretty cool free app called Rome to Rio that I downloaded. Has anyone used that by any chance?

Lexma90

Keep in mind that using maps on your phone in Europe will gobble up your data. I think there's an offline option, but I'm not sure how that works (we have a TomTom that we just take with us in Europe, with Europe maps, and use that). Just like at home, your phone will use whatever the current map is, automatically. (I have an Android, so it uses google maps automatically. No need to update.)

Depending on where your villa is in the Cinque Terre, you may be on narrow, windy roads on a hillside. Just to prepare you.

I agree that Italian drivers are assertive, not necessarily aggressive. Depending on where you drive at home, you should be fine (as in, if you are comfortable driving with big-city driving, then driving in Italian cities is much the same). I enjoy driving in Europe; I'm the driver, DH is the navigator, and it works just fine. And if you take a wrong turn, relax, turn around, and try again.

nytraveler

Well there are a couple of rules we follow:

Always have very good paper maps and check out the whole route in advance, don;t just follow a little box and have no idea of the overall landscape (I don;t trust GPS since it is so often wrong in Manhattan)

Don't drive so many hours per day that you're overtired.

Don;t drive after dark in the countryside if you've never been there before - stick to the daylight so you can see unexpected hazards

Be aware than small country roads may be quite primitive (we've been through a couple in which you had to ford a very small stream - although that was Germany)

We both love to drive in europe so take turns being driver and navigator but never drive more than 2 or 3 hours without a stop.