Leaving for Italy in two weeks and still need advice...
 

We are picking up a rental car in La Spezia, driving to Siena and using the car to tour the area for two days. Our plan has been to drive to Florence (where we are staying for two nights), drop off the car upon arrival and use public transportation in Florence and on to Venice. The drop-off location is "downtown" on Via Borgo Ognissanti near the train station. I am reading that driving in Florence is difficult. Do you think we'd be better leaving the car in Siena and taking a train to Florence? Thank you again.

We returned our rental car in Florence, also on Borgo Ognissanti. We then walked to the train station and trained to Venice. We left the Avis office at about 2:20 and had time to buy tickets and board the 2:45 train to Venice. So long as you have a good street map of Florence and are reasonably good at driving in an unfamiliar foreign city you should be fine.

It's not so much that it's difficult to drive in Florence as that it's important not to drive into a restricted traffic area (ZTL) and possibly get a ticket in the mail months later. (It's done with cameras, and it's not a scam.)

It is possible to drive to Borgo Ognissanti without going into a ZTL, but you must be careful not to enter where there is a ZTL sign: red circle with a white middle on a white sign and "Zona traffico limitato" written on the sign.

Hi S,

If you drop the car in Siena and take the SITA bus from Piazza Gramschi, you will be let off about 2 blks from the SMN train station.

((I))

Thanks for your help. We would prefer to keep the car until we got to Florence so we can make a couple of stops on the way up from Siena. We are not going directly to the train but to our b&b. I have guide books, but not a good street map of Florence. Somewhere on Fodor's is a link for something like mappy.com, perhaps that will work.

When decided to drive into Rome, we just picked up a map of the city while in Italy, so you could do that before going into Florence. www.viamichelin.com is also a good resource if you just want to print directions.

Definitely buy a street map of Florence before you drive into the city. I thought the rental company would give us one, or we could pick one up at a gas station - nope. That was our biggest problem when we went to return our car there.

go to viamichelin.com and enter your departure address in Siena and your destination address in Florence. It will map the route for you and you can zoom in on the street layout in Florence for better reference. Most streets are one way in Florence which is not really different from streets here in the U.S., you just need to understand which highway you will take to enter Florence and how it connects to your destination. From Siena you can drive into the Chianti region and then into Florence.

Snorklesue,

Not to put a wrinkle in your plans, but to shed some light on the La Spezia rental situation hoping that it can be avoided:

We had a nightmare with our car rental in La Spezia this past October.

We rented through Hertz (a well known agency, right?). We had to take a taxi from the train (10-15 min. ride to the office).

When we got there, they brought us the car. <b>It was a joke.</b> The car was all dinged up, extremely dirty w/ bird poop all over it and smelled like fresh smoke (we suspect the driver who drove it over was smoking in it). The worst was that the tires were bald.

We had great service from the clerk helping us, but his hands were tied as La Spezia is a remote location, so they <u>only have the cars that are reserved</u>.

Since we were driving throughout Tuscany for a week, we opted to drive the car to Pisa airport to exchange it for another at the Hertz office there. It was no problem (and we got to take a cheesy photo holding up the leaning tower...ha!). We're glad we made the exchange since we had to drive many white gravel roads in Tuscany.

I've rented many times through Hertz and was shocked at the condition of the car. Which I placed a formal complaint when back home.

Now, about the Florence drop off. We had no trouble at all driving in Italy. But, once we got into the Florence city limits. It took us <b> an entire hour</b> to find the office. We had a good map (and are both very good with directions/orientation), but it was a nightmare as the streets are one way and crowded with people and cars. We didn't return to Ognissanti, but to Maso Finiguerra, so hopefully you won't have too much trouble.

Good luck!