Vignette Um: Cover me!

Like many people, we rely on the insurance provided by our credit card when we rent cars; rental agencies typically have downright brutal rates for coverage, while it’s included in your card. (Always check first, don’t assume you have it!) As we prepared for our honeymoon back in 2012, however, there was a consistent piece of advice we were seeing in various travel forums – get the comprehensive coverage. We were nonplussed, but there was a consistent narrative that the rental agencies in Ireland (Northern or the Republic, it’s not a regional thing) will terrorize you with charges and fees, defining the mildest dings as full replacements and the like. It seemed… well, borderline racist, but even the Irish commenters would say “yes, get the coverage.” And so, we paid a few hundred extra euros for comprehensive accident/collision/meteor strike coverage of our car.

Well. Our honeymoon consisted of a deosil circuit around the edge of the country, scooting south from Dublin and poking around in numerous villages; a new one every day (not something we’d do again, but hey, live and learn). We drove a lot. And when we did it was almost exclusively on the charming back roads. In case you aren’t familiar, “charming back roads” means that two-way traffic proceeds on 1.9 lanes worth of pavement, often with thick stone walls abutting the lane under the deceptive cover of a thick carpet of greenery. Not only that, but some of the most interesting things we wanted to see were on even lesser roads, sometimes of the dirt variety. In short, we were provided ample opportunity to bang up the car and to be frank we took advantage more than once. Most notably were the scratches in the paint from all the vines and such we brushed up against; We never hit a wall but we skimmed along them plenty. Then there was the very deep pot hole that was disguised as a puddle; there’s no way that didn’t bang up something on the underneath. When we pulled into the rental return lot at the Dublin airport you could practically hear the Scrooge McDuck coin-clinking sound going off in the attendant’s mind. We produced our insurance documentation and he noticeably deflated before wishing us a bon voyage.

Get the coverage in Ireland.

Vignette Dois: Google Day-drinks

Let’s get the obligatory disclaimer out of the way: of course the internet has transformed the travel experience, usually for the better. The general reliability of services like Google Maps means, however, that its shortcomings our more noticeable. Less-populated locations, or regions with poor data connectivity, are ripe for difficulties. These troubles happen often enough on our travels that we’ve taken a “ya gotta laugh or you’ll cry” attitude, and so we simply decided that Google often drinks during the work day, perhaps on its lunch break. We have been told to walk down a canal in Venice (blub blub!). We were once sent down an increasingly narrow lane on Naxos (the Greek island) late at night, which eventually ended as the driveway to a home. This necessitated backing up, in the dark with no street lights, for about a kilometer before we could get the car turned around.

Most infamously for us, in the Italian hill town of Orvietto we were sent on a circuitous route to get to what ought to have been a straight-forward destination. We long ago gave up second-guessing the google directions because the times we’ve done it have invariably gone wrong; we were being directed away from a route we knew well because of a traffic snarl we couldn’t see. “Ha, this isn’t the way!” we would say, and then stew in traffic for an hour. No, our faith in these directions is just that – faith. We have no empirical proof that the directions are good, but it often turns out ok. Anyway, we listened to google as the little cobblestone lane got narrower … and narrower.. until finally we reached the last, left, turn that would put us on a proper avenue. However, the aperture for the turn was between two buildings that were, it turns out, 10 or so centimeters tighter than the width of our car. It was only with the jiggling of a 40-point turn and the guidance of some very friendly and helpful locals that we extricated ourselves with only modest damage to the paint of that car. Ouzo, grappa, moonshine… when google drinks, google goes hard.

Vignette Tres: I knew I should’ve taken that left turn in Albuquerque.

Once again, we’re in Italy. This is 2017, and the whole digital apparatus of our lives is far loosey-goosier. (good luck, spell check!) And so we find ourselves navigating through the city of Siena with a cached map that is meant to guide us to some of the veeeeery limited parking in the city. Ah, Siena! A beautiful, ancient city, most famous for the horse race that goes on annually, a contest between the various neighborhoods within the city. Each district has its own livery and symbols, and it is an intense point of pride to claim the prize each year. The race takes place on the piazza del campo, an expansive brick plaza for pedestrians to enjoy; it is a tradition to gather each day in fair weather to watch the light change against the buildings as the sun goes down. People sit in cafes as well as upon the campo itself.

So, we proceeded into beautiful Siena. If you’ve never been into one of these old cities, they are often warrens of twisty-turny avenues; the European aesthetic is often to prefer the retention of old buildings rather than knocking them down to allow for modern roadways. And so we are twisting and turning our way, trying to follow some tricky directions (remember, google drinks!). Fortunately the name of our parking destination begins to appear on directional signs, so we are close! Another couple of turns and it feels like we are almost there. There is an emphatic sign about the left turn we are about to take but… welp, it’s in Italian. So left we go, down a tight little lane but we can see it widens just ahead. Yep, it does.

Onto the campo.

“Oh poop” we both say (more or less). Panicked, we look around. There is absolutely no way we are going to drive across the campo, regardless of the exits that beckon from the far side. It is unlikely that la polizia will accommodate us in any case. Lisa looks to our hard-left and sees a small lane; we make a break for it. Windows down, we are waving people out of the way so we can scoot off this UNESCO World Heritage Site pronto. Y’all… this lane was so narrow and so in use it was crazy. There were cafes that had outdoor seating, and hand-to-gods with our windows down we could pick olives off of the tables. A waiter saw us, shrugged in classic Italian fashion and scooted a chair a few inches out of the way.We were like a whale swimming with dolphins, where the dolphins were the pedestrians who were supposed to be there. We honestly should have turned the engine off and kicked ourselves along like a scooter. We look back and laugh, but we were naturally mortified in the moment.

Believe it or not, despite all of this (and this really is just a sample) we still enjoy the freedom of driving through the back roads of Europe. We did it earlier this year in Scotland with pleasure, and will continue on in the future.

We did a lot of driving in Italy, so we have a few stories to tell.

Driving in Italy, J. tells me, is a like wielding the One Power as an Aes Sedai. Let’s explain. In those books, the one power as explained to us must be worked with, not struggled against. Similarly, there is no point in getting angry at traffic or other drivers; on the other hand it is liberating to realize that the drivers there almost never get angry at you. The default assumption seems to be that everyone just wants to get where they are going and everyone else just chills out.

Almost.

We were in a taxi in Rome in the morning, during ‘rush hour’ (or, what might be in any other city) and traffic seemed particularly bottled at a fairly complicated, key, intersection. We made our way through, with the driver visibly agitated because clearly things weren’t going they way they should. Sure enough, we navigated through to the arterial that runs along the Tiber, only to find that a police van had blocked one of the two lanes! As we crawled past, our driver shouted a filthy obscenity at the officer visible. It was the only time a driver swore — so you know it was a big deal!

Rome, generally speaking, was super crazy at first, but once we figured out the rules, made perfect sense. In Rome everyone just looks out for themselves, but that includes dropping back when another driver confidently moves in. Confidence is key! Just go about your business, don’t worry about the others, and it all works out. We picked up our rental car in Rome and confidently drove out of the city, merging easily and generally being fine. (Note, you really do need to have a Zen-like confidence that other cars won’t hit you.) I didn’t see a lot of drivers glued to their phones, or texting, and that might be a major difference. Italians pay attention to their driving.

The roads are well-maintained and wide. It really is a pleasure to drive around. The model you get for your rental makes a difference — we’re not fans of the Panda because it lacks power. Our favorite to date was the Audi hatchback we had on the first trip. If we could find that car here, we’d buy it.

On one of our trips through the Val d’Orcia we spent large stretches of time being the only car of the road. The weather was lovely: warm and clear. It was like a moment out of a novel when the road we were on came to an end at a barricade. No signage. No crew working. Nothing, just a series of concrete slabs. J. wanted to try and go around (we could have squeezed the car up onto the gentle verge and made it), but I cautioned that we really didn’t want to get stuck somewhere we couldn’t get out of. So we turned around.

J. got so good at driving, in fact, that when we returning to Rome, he had no problem zooming our little car past a bus and across two lanes of traffic to exit into the city. Do not try this if you are just setting out! (Also, he had to pay a $125 fine for speeding.)

Note that we’ve been told by reliable travelers that the Italian government has no problem targeting rental cars for fines when they don’t fine local drivers. So you can be going along with traffic at 120kph and you’ll be the only ticket. How? They have electronic surveillance that sends a ticket to you r rental agency, who then just charge the card on file. But you don’t get the bill for, potentially, months. Surprise!