Car Rental

One nice thing about driving from Rome to Siena is that you could stop and see the beautiful town of Orvieto, which is right along the way. It's definitely better to make your rental arrangements online, before you leave the states. Many on this site use autoeurope.com or gemut.com. In fact, autoeurope.com is based right there in Maine.

'stop and see the beautiful town of Orvieto', or Perugia, or Assi I don't think it makes much difference where or how early you reserve a car, but I think using the internet gets a better rate. I've gotten off of an airplane and made an internet reservation frm the terminal, then been in line with a guy who was on the same plane and just walked up to the counter. I got a better deal on an identical car. Gemut has never rung my bell, nor autoeruope necessarily. I use kayak.com (which will check autoeurope) and take whatever is the best deal. Autoeurope seldom wins. Drop the car as you get to the CT or where ever you'll change modes of transportation.

Gotta say it: All of those places are easily accessible by rail. Several are very car adverse. Whatever your decision, have a great trip!

Gotta say it: Rail has a schedule. A car don't. When you stop, you can't leave your stuff on the train. And trains don't go to the top of those hills.

I'm a fan of getting the car where you need it. I would try to rent in Siena and drop in Lucca or perhaps La Spezia. You can either train or drive to CT, but generally the train is closer to town then the parking lot. I had an interesting experience reserving a Hertz rental. I used Kayak.com and reserved a car. We wanted one size up from the smallest, and using Kayak.com that boosted the price 30%. Ouch! NYtimes.com had a travel article that pointed me to a site called vroomvroomvroom.com for car rental. For the exact same car, hertz, in the same location, etc. it was much cheaper. The base car (smallest) was the same price on both sites, but the vroom site only charged me a couple of euros to get the next size up. I talked to Hertz about this and they told me that kayak.com had identified me as an american tourist, so the pricing model charged me more for a larger car. The vroom site didn't identify me as an american tourist, so I got the European pricing. We returned from Italy three days ago. The rental in Lucca went off without a hitch. As far as driving from Rome, consider the cost of tolls and fuel. The train will be cheaper and less hassle, but you will miss some of the towns. We drove from Bagni di Lucca to Milan via Aulla, and the tolls from Aulla to Milan were about 16 Euros for 210 km. All other things being equal, I think it is best to use the train as much as you can and only use a car for the parts of Italy that you can't reach by train. Ciao.