My wife and I will be traveling in Tuscany this Fall, and are planning to visit smaller towns by car from a base in Montepulciano. We're both in our. early 80's but are fully capable of driving. (I plan to avoid the Autostrada, however!). We're running into age restrictions on car rentals. Anyone have any suggestions for a source for a rental car?? Thanks...
Posted by
🏝️ Hobe Sound, FL⛱️
3279 posts
Check by calling the toll free number for AutoEurope - 888-223-5555. Their customer service people go above and beyond. I just did a test using age 81 for a week in May and it returned Eurocar, Hertz and Avis.
To me, the autostrada is safer and less stressful than some local roads. It’s the equivalent of an interstate in the US.
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11569 posts
Don’t avoid the Autostrada. It is similar to US highways.
Posted by
Colorado Mountains, USA
7937 posts
Neither of us have quite reached our 80’s, so I haven’t needed to find special rental allowances. I’d have an outstanding, small rental company to recommend (Lu.Ma.Tos) that we used last year, except they deal with far western, coastal Tuscany, and I don’t think they work as far inland as Montepulciano.
AutoEurope should be able to identify any company that has issues renting to drivers over a particular age, and to find alternatives.
The Autostradi (A roads) as well as the S roads aren’t hard to navigate, although were a bit stressful for my husband 2 years ago. Speed limits sometimes abruptly changed without much obvious reason why, and some drivers in the left lane were going way faster than the speed limit - as if there was no limit. Meanwhile, big semi’s in the right lane, who were limited to a maximum speed for their truck, regardless of how fast cars were allowed to go, sometimes presented a slow delay, and it wasn’t always easy to get around them, with the speeders coming by on the left.
Then there were the speed camera boxes, set up occasionally on the right side of the highway, with warning signs that a camera was coming up. It looked like the locals slowed down suddenly as they went past the camera, then accelerated again to excessive speeds when they knew it would be a while until the next camera.
And don’t be surprised by frequent construction zones, with accompanying speed limit reductions and/or traffic jams. It seems that more and more Italian highways are being built with tunnels going through mountains, not around. We had several places where there was one-way traffic, and they stopped traffic going one direction for some time, before letting vehicles going the opposite direction through.
It’s a bit of a contest - go fast but not too fast. Stay in the right lane and don’t worry about so many others whizzing by you in the passing lane, except be prepared for big trucks going much slower in the right lane - and some of them will be passing even slower trucks, so they may be coming over to the left of those. It’s kind-of a game, but you don’t want to be a big loser, so be careful.
Then there are the toll booth areas - slow down and get in the right lane (pay by credit card, or pay by cash, as opposed to automatic electronic payment), then once you’ve paid, it’s a race again as cars at the adjoining booths try to outdo each other to merge back into the traffic lanes.