Oct Trip to Italy Q#3: Drive from Rome to Siena. Easy? How to?

Some travelers have found it is worth the trouble to go to the Rome airport to pick up their rental car, easier to get out of town. And many travelers reporting in here have not had good experiences driving into the center of Florence (received $150 fines in the mail from accidentally violating the infamous restricted zones), so may be best to select a return location well outside the Florence city center.

We will be staying near Termini, do you think it is easy to pick up the car from near the station and drive out of town from there? Where can I find more information about the restricted zones in Florence?

You've come to the right place? Here's some links to many prior discussions of this unpleasant topic:click here

O boy.. this is looking scary to me. I dont know how we can drop the car outside the city of Florence and try to catch a train there. Thanks for the links. I will read more of them.

I agree with Kent to a point. Pick up your rental car at either the Rome airport or in Orvieto. Don't try to drive out of central Rome.

But you can drop your car in Florence. Just make sure you have good directions to the rental agency.

As always, I recommend starting with Autoeurope.com for rates and details.

To avoid the headaches of driving in either Florence or Rome, you might consider just taking the train to Siena, picking up your rental car there, then return your car to Siena when you're done with it. Then you can take a train or bus to Florence. (The bus is cheap, it runs very frequently each day, and it leaves you off at the train station). That's essentially what we did last month and it worked out ok.

And be aware that Siena also has a restricted, no-driving zone. I know that if you bring along a Garmin GPS, it will help you avoid this area. (Our Garmin essentially didn't even know that those streets existed).

I agree that you should reserve your car through AutoEurope.

I have to disagree about not picking up a rental car in central Rome. We picked ours up on a Monday morning (June 30th, anticipating a traffic nightmare), and getting out was easy.

The rental agencies are at the Termini, but the cars are in a garage a block or so down and across the street. So, it was relaxing to load up, check the car out, figure out the nav system, etc., without feeling pressure to get off the street.

We had the same experience as Leslie. Picked up the rental car at Termini in Rome around noon. Traffic was not as bad as it could be at other times of the day. yes, it was somewhat stressful to get out of Rome but still managable.

If you're staying overnight in Siena ask your hotel for a parking lot recommendation well outside the restriced zones. We didn't find driving to Siena difficult at all.

We didn't drive in Florence ourselves but my brother arrived by train in Florence and picked his one up at the train station and returned it there. Both times well before the afternoon rush hour with no stress at all. And that after he had a really stressful train ride on the way to Florence (their night train from Germany was 3 hours delayed and they missed all connections and reservations standing in crowded trains for hours ...).

Do you really have to drop the car off in Florence and then take the train to Venice? If not, another option is to keep the car while in Florence, drive to Venice and dump the car when you arrive in Venice.

If you're interested, we stayed at Hotel David, which is a lovely Florence hotel that has free private parking.

I agree with Leslie. We rented through AutoEurope last summer, retrieved an Avis car from the parking garage a couple blocks from Termini. Driving out of Rome from Termini is no big deal. Now, having said that, I should point out that people who are easily scared of the prospect of driving in Rome should not take the advice of confident drivers lest they feel later they got bad advice. Similarly, confident drivers don't benefit from the advice of unconfident drivers who consistently warn everyone, regardless of their driving abilities, to avoid driving in certain places. If you feel skilled enough to drive into any unfamiliar large city and navigate around, you're probably good to go. If this scares you, go with your gut.

It's absolutely true that Florence is cram-packed with no-driving zones. I would plan a route that ensures you will get to the car rental return location without passing through one of these zones (called ZTLs). Here's a link to the ZTL map of Florence: http://www.bella-toscana.com/traffic/firenze_ztl_map.jpg

Great to finally hear some positive experiences about driving out from Rome. We would also want to save some train money from Rome to Siena, and we have to rent the car on the same day anyway, so it kind of make sense to drive up directly from Rome, and we dont really mind the few hours drive (or even excited about it). We are actually staying at a farmhouse OUTSIDE the city of Siena, so we dont actually need to drive in if we dont want to, and they have plenty of parking. I think we just have to plan and be smart about driving into Florence, and maybe taking the bus for a day trip there make sense. And we havent book the train tickets to Venice yet, so maybe we can also drop the car in Siena and take the bus from Siena to Florence then train to Venice? Is it really THAT bad to drop the car in Florence? Even outside the city? If we are dropping the car outside of Florence, is it easy to get to the train station? Or should we just take the bus all the way from Siena? Thanks for all the responds!! this is great!