Details, the car

So we've got the Home Front ready. And we now have an Italian phone number in place and a phone to go with it. Today we just received the documentation in the mail for our car.

Early on in the planning stages we vacillated over whether to use only public transportation or to rent a car part of the time and rely on public transportation part of the time or to have a car the entire time. As our itinerary came together -- a week in Sicily and then Puglia and about 9 days in northern Italy) it became apparent that we were going to be traveling one and half times the length of the peninula. A car for the entire trip won out. Still, we do plan to use the local bus service in Siena. As students in Siena we qualify for monthly bus passes which we will use regularly since the local bus stop is not 100 meters from our apartment. But as Americans and from the midwest to boot we have become spoiled in the belief that we need a car.

As it turns out, however, we do need a car, since we will be spending a fair amount of time traveling even during our 8 weeks sojourn in Siena. We will be teaming up with Patti and Roberto Bechi (they live in Serre di Rapolano not far from Siena) to capture a number of oral histories on videotape. Patti is originally from the US and Roberto was born in Siena and works as a tour guide specializing in small tours of Tuscany rarely experienced by the harried tourist. We first met them in 2001 after reading about Roberto in a Rick Steves' guidebook. (Subsequently Roberto has been in a number of Rick Steves' travel shows for PBS.)

Anyway, the plan is to focus on a small group of Italians: artisans, organic farmers, war veterans, who Roberto has come to know over the years and put their stories together in a collection of Tuscan lives rarely seen by most Americans. A glimpse of the Tuscany little noticed as tourists fly from Florence to Siena to San Gimignano to Rome to Venice and on and on. . . But more of this later.

The fact is a car will definitely be necessary.

Since we were looking at 78 days a car rental agency was out of the question mainly for one reason: cost. It turns out, however, that Renault and Peugeot (through Kemwel) both have short-term leasing programs where you actually purchase a new car, keep it for a minimum of 17 days (the longer you keep it the better the overall cost though) and return it when your're finished. Insurance is included with zero deductible (very important) and unlimited mileage.

We opted for a Renault Laguna 1.8 sedan for $35 a day. This is a midsize vehicle and Renault has a number of smaller models to choose from which are naturally less money. But we had to keep in mind a number of factors: transporting our bags was one and of course transporting people so a smaller car was out of the question.

That's right. We just got the news today that Sue's brother Dick and his wife Dorothy got a great fare on Alitalia and will coming over to join us for a few days in mid-March. So you see, we need the room!

And speaking of room our apartment will have plenty of that, and it was a place we felt comfortable in since we stayed in the very same apartment in 1999 when we took our first language course in Siena.

More of our accommodation and our language program next time. And our final itinerary.