Rome-ing Around

Ancient Romans must have had a lot of time on their hands - because one spends a lot of time getting lost in Rome. For being the ancient capital of the world, it is very unorganized. The street signs are either obscure, or non-existent.

We tried to save money by renting a car. I don't know how much money we saved, but I do know we probably would have saved a lot of frustration if we hadn't rented a car.

Traveling in Italy is tricky - here's the tricks we learned:

Trick #1: Rent a car
Ok, that sounds easy. Evidently, renting a car is really popular - for Italians. We stopped in car rental place after rental place before we finally found one car available, and that would allow us to drop it off in a different city. Novafeltria, our destination, is too small to have a car rental place, so we figured I could return it to a larger, nearby (we thought) city, called Bologna. We thought it would be really simple: Drive to Novafeltria, spend the night, I get up the next morning at a comfortable hour, drive to Bologna (couple hours), return the car, take a train to Rimini, take a bus from Rimini to Novafeltria - simple! But before all that, we had to locate where the car rental places were even at. The airport must not think much of car rental places, because they were all located in the hot parking garages, and I didn't detect any air conditioning in any of the offices. We went from office to office, before we finally found a car available. It was a company I have never heard of, but it was our last shot, so we took it. It was a cute little car (a manual - I think they all are) made by Fiat. I can drive a manual, so that wasn't a big deal, but I don't drive them that often, so it took a few minutes to get comfortable again.

One of the things we noticed right away was everything is really tiny - the roads, the cars, everything! We made it out of the parking garage ok, and then hit the road towards Rome, which was nearby.

Trick #2: Avoid Rome-ing.
I think I figured out where the term "roaming" came from. It originated from the root word "rome" which means "to desperately wish to leave Rome, but you can't because nothing is labeled, so you wander about for hours" (I believe I pulled that directly off Dictionary.com).

Trick #3: Don't obey the traffic laws.
Believe me, if you obeyed the speed limit, the lines on the road, and the right of way, you would be stuck in one spot all week, or get run over. We learned very quickly, Italians drive like they are hallucinating. If there is a crack between two cars that is within 6 inches (sorry, 0.15 meters) of being big enough, they will try and squeeze through as fast as they can. And I mean fast! We were traveling at the speed "limit" (posted at 80 km/hr, but we were told at the car rental place the "limit is 130 km/hr"), and cars would fly past us like we were standing still! Motor cycles and scooters evidently have even fewer laws on the books for them, because they would pass us whenever they jolly well felt like it, on the right or left, or right between the lanes of traffic, no matter the speed! Check out the video we made about 2 hours into our Rome-ing...


Trick #4: Forget your cardinal directions.
North, South, East and West are evidently going out of style, because there is no such thing in Italy that we have come across yet. This became a problem when we needed to make a simple switch from one highway (autostrada) to another in the city of Perugia. We got going the wrong direction, and then needed to turn around. In the US, this is generally a very straight-forward procedure. Exit, take two left turns, and voila!, you are going the opposite direction! Not in Italy. We burned another hour just trying to find the autostrada we needed to get near Novafeltria.

Trick #5: Learn to drive in rural Italy.
Now, in Iowa, rural areas are actually pretty easy. Every mile has a road. Like a chess board.

Italy is like a jigsaw puzzle. Still in the box.
And of course, none of the pieces have labels on them. You have to use intuition to drive. And our intuition is pretty lousy. Actually, Leah started figuring out the code after several hours; otherwise, I would still be driving around mountains if it wasn't for her.

Check out the video at how exciting this kind of driving is late at night!


Trick #6: Derive intelligent information from drunks.
Ok, so this didn't actually happen. They were way too drunk.
We finally got into Novafeltria at about 2 am, and the ONLY people still awake in the town were about five drunks still in the "centro piazza," or town square. And they knew nothing about where we were supposed to stay. We had been told we were to meet someone at the town square that would show us where we were to stay, but we couldn't find them, and the drunks didn't know the person either.

So we were pretty stranded. NOTHING was open, not even the police station. Or a restaurant. Or a hotel. Or ANYTHING!! Being accustomed to a 24 hour culture is a bit shocking when everything closes around 6 or 7 pm. So, we decided that we needed some sleep, and the only way we were going to do that is if we stayed in the car. We actually found a really nice place to park, out of the way, shaded by trees. When we awoke, it was about 6 am. We still had to wait for a couple hours to make sure everything was open, and people were moving around. Around 8 am, we started driving around, asking for directions to the school. After about a half hour, we found a person who knew what we were talking about, and pointed us to it. We showed up, and the staff were pretty horrified we had to sleep in the car.

We found out that we had been sent several emails with directions, contact information, and everything that would have been helpful, but all those emails bounced back, and never got to us.
Very frustrating.

We were taken out for breakfast, and then shown our apartment. It is very nice, and quite homey and cozy. Most of the walls are solid concrete, and very thick, and retain heat fairly well during the night, but keep it cool during the day; because of this, there is no need to have any air conditioning. There don't seem to be too many bugs, but I did get a couple bites today.

Well, that's all for today, I'll tell you about returning the car and show you more around the town tomorrow!

God bless,
Dave and Leah