On Thu, 13 Mar 2008 16:05:50 +0000, Giovanni Drogo wrote
(in article ):
>
>
> I fully appreciate the idea of being able to choose how many days to
> stay in a particular place in near real time or have a flexible
> itinerary. I used to travel that way when I was younger (in UK, Benelux,
> Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Scandinavia....
[Lots of useful observations and advice snipped]
Thanks for all your thoughts. I found that very interesting and useful.
I think my problem with Italy comes from the fact that I expected for some
reason that a car would be more useful there than anywhere else. (I don't
know why really - just the reputation of Italy as a motor mad country). In
fact the reverse seems to be true. Italy is a bit like England in that
respect - a car is more of a liability than anything else. France is very
nice to drive around, I find; Germany and Austria are OK, and Greece is
marvellous. We can get to places in Greece with our own car that I would
never attempt by public transport.
Last year I thought I would have a final attempt at motoring long distance in
Italy and came back from Brindisi west across Italy to the Naples area
(avoiding Naples itself of course). We planned to follow the old Via Appia
for a hundred miles or so which I thought would be quite scenic and
interesting. In fact the road itself was appalling and kept going through
very busy little towns which were hardly marked on our maps, which had no
clear route through or round and took ages to navigate past. I remember
though that we stayed in quite a nice little place called Picerno on the way.
The next day we drove all day in torrential rain and reached the Riviera by
evening where we stayed at a stunning place above Finale Ligure with an
amazing view over the coast. Unfortunately it was by then extremely cold
(very odd for early June) and we couldn't properly appreciate it. The
overnight stops were quite reasonable, but the driving in between I found
very tiresome.
--
Mike Lane (UK North Yorkshire)
To contact me replace invalid with mike underscore lane
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