rmgood

This May we will be on our train/drive vacation in Italy. After our visit to Rome, we plan on renting a car and driving north thru Tuscany. We are early risers and would like to be on the road BEFORE normal opening hours for rental car agencies. We could pick up the car the night before, but what would we do with the car for the night... I dont want to drive in Rome itself... Does anyone know how to solve this problem, other than accepting a departure from Rome at a later hour than desired?

We are leaving Rome on a Saturday; How is driving in Rome on the weekends?

bobthenavigator

I would get the car in Orvieto at 0900 and be on my way.

kybourbon

Rome, like many cities in Italy has ZTL so you aren't allowed to drive in it and you would need to avoid it unless you want an expensive ticket. You would need to park the car in a garage outside the ZTL. Unlike smaller cities such as Florence, I don't know that Rome has any agreement about driving to your hotel inside the ZTL to pick up luggage. In Florence, if your hotel takes part, you can drive in/out on arrival/departure days and your hotel notifies the proper authorities. It doesn't give you daily in/out while staying there (some people think they can do day trips, but it's only for luggage drop off/pick up days).

Check the times at the car agencies in the Villa Borghese underground lot. They may have more convenient hours and easy access out of the city with crossing into ZTL.

kybourbon

Here's a map of the ZTL. The red circles are camera locations which snap a pic of your license plate. The yellow area is the daytime ZTL. The lower map is the night ZTL (the blue areas) which shifts the ZTL area a bit.

http://www.comune.roma.it/wps/portal...e=ztl_mun_i.wp

annhig

you don't say, RM, if you have experience of driving in Italy - certainly driving in Rome is not what I'd want as my first experience of doing so.

there is a train leaves Roma Termini at 7.28 that gets into Orvieto at 8.43, or a later one leaving at 8.58 arriving at 1014. The AVIS offices are right opposite the station. they are open on Sat am from 9.30 -12.30 so that would work well with the later train. it takes over 1 ¼ hours to drive from Rome to Orvieto anyway so you don't lose any time, so long as Orvieto is in the right direction of course!

kybourbon

There's also a Hertz office near the train station in Orvieto. You might check the car rental times in Chiusi also (20 minutes north of Orvieto on the same train).

Were do you plan to stay in Tuscany?

annhig

ky - I didn't mention Hertz as google shows the office as being some way from the station, which wouldn't be much fun with luggage though it wouldn't be the first time that google has been wrong of course.

kybourbon

Last time I returned a car to Hertz in Orvieto, it was closer than Avis. Hertz was almost within site. A very short walk.

annhig

so the map much be wrong - it shows the Hertz office as being up in the town.

kybourbon

If you zoom in on the map, you will see Hertz located within a block or so from the train station (it appears a tad closer than the Avis office).

https://www.hertz.com/rentacar/location/PEGS60

sandralist

Where are you going in Tuscany? How early do you want to start?

janisj

IME/IMO, it makes much more sense to take the train to Orvieto than to collect you car in Rome. Listen to annhig and kybourbon.

sandralist

Lol, janisj. The OP shouldn't listen to bobthenavigtor -- who is telling him to pick it up in Orvieto -- but listen to kybourbon who is suggesting a pickup in Villa Borghese (that's in Rome).

When have you ever picked up a car in Rome --- or been to Rome? What year was that again? T

Like kybourbon, knowing where the OP is going and what time they would like to get started might mean there is a solution that doesn't involve schlepping luggate around train stations and waiting for the Orvieto train station to open.

sandralist

Actually, I'd like to ask everybody posting in this thread if they have ever rented a car in Rome and driven out of town on any morning of the week.

sandralist

rmgood,

The reason I asked where you are going in Tuscany and how early you wanted to get started is that there are some locations in Rome that open earlier than 8.30 am on Saturdays, but which one might work for you depends on where you are going in Tuscany. Ditto about whether there is a better stop than Orvieto for renting a car if you want to first get on a train (kybourbon suggested Chiusi, which might make more sense than Orvieto, but there might be other possibilities).

Sorry if I missed an earlier thread where you mentioned your entire itinerary. But since janisj made a point of telling you to only listen to some posters, I will make a point of suggesting you ignore her because she is not interested in your trip and knows nothing about Rome. She only posted here to make it look like you shouldn't listen to some other people (who have in fact driven in Rome many times..... yeah, I know).

BigShoulders

I have rented a car in Rome several times, most recently December 2013. For this exercise, I would rent the night before from Hertz at the Borghese Gardens, and then leave the car in the garage there overnight, departing early the next morning.

Taking a train to Orvieto or even Florence is certainly another option, and I can see why some would prefer that.

By the way, I find Rome to be among the most difficult places I have ever driven.

sandralist

rmgood,

One more thought, since kybourbon mentioned picking up the car at the Villa Borghese parking garage in Rome. It is a parking garage -- so one possibility is for you to pick up the car the night before from the car rental office and simply drive it into a parking space in the same garage. Then go back the next morning and get the car however early you want.

BUT: I have never personally done this so I don't know whether you can always count on finding an empty space at the hour you would need it (although I think you can book in advance online). You might want to call the rental offices and see what they suggest. Or ask on the TripAdvisor message board forums where some residents of Rome frequently post.

http://www.sabait.it/en/parking/rome

Or you can just ignore everybody except who janisj tells you to listen to!

(I think I will take my own advice and ignore her totally.)

kybourbon

If you bothered to read the OP's original post, it said he/she was going to Tuscany and wanted options and NOT on weekday. Some of us actually read the posts before responding. Some of us have picked up at numerous places throughout Italy and bobthenavigator was spot on about Orvieto as it takes longer to reach Chiusi and that might not work time wise for the OP to reach before closing. Haven't picked up at Chiusi lately, but in the past, wasn't as convenient to the train station as Orvieto agencies.

sandralist

Funny, BigShoulders -- we were writing at the same time!

Great minds..... I agree Rome is a difficult place to drive but heading out from the villa Borghese parking lot at the crack of dawn on a Saturday shouldn't be too much of a problem if the driver has studied a map ahead of time and gotten good directions.

rmgood, the Slow Travel website can give you detailed diretions about doing this if you decide on that option.

sandralist

What is your problem kybourbon? My post are all about leaving Rome on a Saturday morning. I did read the OP's post. And I read yours, where you suggested Chiusi, not Orvieto and picking up at the Villa Borghese, because it might be better suited to where the OP was going.

You didn't read my posts. LIke janisj, you just see my screen name and lose your head.

But thanks for confirming that you've never actually picked up a car in Rome and don't know what you are talking about.

Dear rmgood, best wishes to you. You might want to listen to BigShoulders, who speaks from experinence. I am ignoring this thread from now on, given all the directions I can give. But if your destination in Tuscany is nearer to Florence or Arezzo, or even Siena, there might be better early morning train station options for your car pick up than Orvieto. Just so you know.