Crete Senese

We purchased the Michelin Italy Tourist and Motoring Atlas in Borders for our trip. (approx 9" x11.5") $22.00 It is spiral bound and the maps are very detailed. (191+ pages) You could remove the pages you need and put them in your own folder or make color copies of your pages. DK Eyewitness Travel: "Back Roads of Italy" 2010 has several pages on the Crete Senesi, Drive 11, Tuscan Vistas pgs 128-135. Lovely pictures, eats and drinks, maps, walks, etc. WOW, now I want to go there!

Thanks Char! I'll check into both.

We did this same one-day trip in April 2011, but in reverse. With only one day, you may want to start early. Some car rental offices don't open until 9am so that will cut into your drive time unless you get the car the night before you start. Maybe the Siena car rental office will be efficient, but the one in Orvieto wasn't and there were people in line ahead of us, so we got a late start - shame. There's so much to see, you will have to decide what to cut, depending on whether you want some quality time in a few towns or just want to hurry through. It may help if you have a copilot to watch the maps, especially when going through towns. We took our GPS (Garmin) with the Italy maps downloaded into it and we are really glad we did. I let my wife read the GPS while I kept my eyes on the road. In some busy towns you may have bicycles and Vespas close on both sides of you plus plenty of roundabouts with traffic zipping through them. With my wife on the GPS and pointing out the turns, we made it though probably 20 roundabouts without problems. The GPS tends to fade in narrow streets in the main cities due to lack of enough sky, but in the countryside and in the smaller towns it really worked well. With maps, it can get tricky trying to find and read street signs while moving along but the GPS solved all this for us - with copilot, that is. We kept a map as a backup, but are sold on GPS for Italian countryside driving. If your GPS preference setting is "scenic" you may find yourself on some twisty roads, but beautiful countryside, if that's what you'd like. SP 438 to Asciano (no stop) 451 to Monte Olivetto Abbey 451, SR2 to Montalcino (or skip) SR2, 146 to Pienza
146 to Montepulciano Between Montepulciano and Orvieto it was country driving, through hills, fields, woods, and along crests. Enjoy.

Thanks Don! That sounds wonderful. I was wondering how well the GPS works. We have a TomTom but it doesn't say the street names. (It is older.) Did your Garmin say street names, or do you think that is necessary?

Our Garmin says street names and gives advance directions but we really used the screen instead. The English pronunciation of Italian names was sometimes entertaining. My co-pilot mostly watched the screen, seeing ahead and pointing to what the next turn was going to be - hand gestures worked great. Most car rentals are manual shift, so you may be busy enough. I got a refurbished Garmin Nuvi 3790T because it accepts voice commands, but didn't attempt to use voice commands in Europe because of pronunciation issues - so my wife did the navigation. It has pedestrian mode, which worked well in Paris but not the narrow streets of Florence, and Siena. Instead, we used an Android smart phone with Google maps and GPS for some pedestrian navigating and mostly regular paper maps. I saw more tourists with electronic gadgets this trip and that looks like the future of travel - smart phones with travel apps, iPads, GPSs, and Mp3 players for the audio tours. If you go with Garmin you can read the reviews of Italy maps for Garmin on Amazon for lots of tips.