I think that’s especially true for countries like Italy, where you can find a great amount of beauty and differences in a relatively small space. There are tons of organized tours that will bring you to Venice, Milan, Rome, etc, but with all of them you always have a fixed itinerary and very little time to spend in every location. With a car, you can choose where to go, how long to stay, how much driving you want to do…you obviously need to organize it on your own, and this can be hard, but at the end of the holiday you’ll be for sure happier with what you’ve seen and done!
On the way SOUTH!
By the way, a driving holiday have its PROs and CONs, and it’s very important to know them before leaving…for example, it will not be cheap, as you may think instead, mainly because of gas’ price, but also due to the other costs you will have to sustain (hotels, meals, etc). If you want to try cutting on these costs, you should opt for a driving wild camping holiday, in which case I strongly recommend you read this post ;)
Another contro of this kind of holiday is that is going to be stressful…you should try to plan in advance what to see and where to stop as much as possible, at least for my experience, because finding yourself in the middle of nowhere when darkness is approaching is nothing bad, but it’s annoying for sure. Still, remember that the best thing of this kind of holiday is the FREEDOM it gives you, so don’t even plan too much…let’s say you DO want to have a main plan with a clear itinerary drawn on a map, but you also want to go through some adventure and have the freedom of changing your mind if you see a place that seems interesting or beautiful…for this purpose, a camping holiday is a good idea again, because you don’t need to book in advance (in peak season you may have a hard time finding a camping, but eventually you will always find one that has a spot for your tent).
If you want to do this in Italy, here are some main advices you should follow:
- Try to travel with a GPL car, it will cost you HALF THE PRICE it would with a normal car. The contro is that GPL service stations are not always available if not on the highways, so try to make fuel at every occasion you have.
- Try to avoid peak season, that is from middle July until the end of August…you will find less tourists, more space in hotels/camping, and much more reasonable fares for everything!
- Italy may seem small when you look at it on a map and you compare it with other States like Spain or France, but it’s not! it is narrow but it’s also very long, the whole length is about 1.500km (this is from Aosta to Reggio Calabria according to Google maps), and it means driving for 14 hours…you can do it, for sure, but if you are planning to stop by in Florence, then in Rome, then have a quick look at Naples, and since you are already there obviously you will want to see also Ischia…………….you are going to need a month to do so! It’s better to choose a defined area and explore it fully, than to spend your one-week holiday in a car screaming against the traffic and not enjoying what you see!
In my opinion, there are two main choices you can do for a driving holiday in Italy, and they obviously are:
- the east coast, on the Adriatic sea, especially famous for the Riviera Romagnola nightlife, for the beautiful sandy coasts of Marche, Molise and Abruzzo, and the beauties of Puglia with its Salento.
- the west coast, probably the well-known and most touristic, with the amazing Cinque Terre, famous cities like Florence, Rome, Naples, great beaches and good food.
Driving holiday ‘old style’
Obviously there are SOOOOO MANY more things to see in Italy, both in the northern part and in the islands (a tour of Sicily or Sardinia with your car could be itself a wonderful driving holiday), but for simplicity reasons I divided it in these 2 main categories. You should plan your trip on some parts of one of them, accordingly to the time available.
In the next post you’ll read my experience with this kind of holiday, and I’ll share with you some of the best spots I’ve seen!
Did you do a holiday like this somewhere? Precisely in Italy, maybe? I’d love to hear your story! :) Comment down here!