Car Driving / La Autostrada and other Rome, Italy Transportation Tips

'Mode': AROUND
Category: Car/Motor Home
Getting TO/AROUND: We drive off and somehow miraculously find the famous ‘Autostrada’ – the toll way south. We drive along for about 15 minutes and the damn fuel warning light comes on. Now we realize that the needle is almost on empty.
After about a half hour of driving, we finally settle down and finally relax for the rest of the drive.

Paying the toll along the way was easy, you slip in the ticket, slip in your credit card, out comes a receipt, the gate opens; and you’re on your way. There are three lanes of traffic on the Autostrada, a right lane for all trucks and cars going 60-70 mph. The middle lane is for 70-80 mph speed, and the left lane is for 80-90+ mph speedsters. I got lights blinked at me only 2x during the whole drive time. Everyone just seems to know where to be. We did a little driving in fast left lane doing 140 km keeping up with a good stream of traffic consisting mostly of BMWs, Audis, and Mercedes. We noticed that all the cars over there both the large models and smaller ones were always standard transmissions, including the finest and largest Mercedes, station wagons, and the public buses. This I found to be much unlike our country which has become almost exclusively automatic transmissions.

We are glad that we did the Italian drive down to Amalfi and in retrospect, enjoyed it, but probably wouldn’t do it the next time. A train would work well. I say that, but on later trips in Northern Italy, we drove easily without any tense situations. I think that cliff lined Amalfi coast area is the one to watch out for.

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