- Don’t
- If you have to, here are some things to watch out for:
- Everything and Everyone
- Always Get Zero Excess insurance, the reasons for this will become clearer below
- The airport car rental ‘prior damage inspection’ is really just to make their operation appear professional and not given much attention. Sam had to fill in the report card herself and tell the man at the counter who just shrugged and said ‘ahh, coupla scratches, you’ll be ok’.
- ‘Every’ car on the road has large dents and scratches, thus the above point now makes more sense. Apparently cars are washed with Vaseline in Sicily so they can squeeze through tight spaces.
- Don’t drive to a busy shopping center as your first waypoint after picking up the car.
- Don’t ever attempt to drive tired or cranky from a 20 hour flight until you have at least 1 full night’s rest. This tip, we didn’t follow unfortunately.
- Expect to have a nervous breakdown the first day you drive and have nightmares that night, when and if you get to sleep. Repair marriage the next morning.
- TIP: swig some scotch prior to driving to reduce nerves. Politzia won’t care (see below) and will probably applaud you or just confiscate the bottle for themselves, so just use cheap scotch, not Glenlivet Founder’s Reserve Single Malt from the Duty Free shop in Sydney airport 🙂
- Numerous and ubiquitous road signs that are all red and scream Warning! but give you no hint at what they are warning you of. Possibly just to get off the road in general. See image below.
- One of the signs printed on the lane in front of you as you approach an intersection, is a Big Hollow triangle pointing back at you, giving you the false impression that you are in the Wrong Lane and to Go Back, but only seconds before you enter the intersection with trucks coming at you.
- Another lane marking on freeways is a massively big arrow painted in the right lane, pointing right, apparently indicating that the lane turns right soon. One then moves into the left (fast) lane and gets abused. Apparently the arrow means that another lane will magically appear on the right of you soon which you can then use to exit the freeway. Note: this is true appx 85% of the time, with the remaining % indicating the aforementioned logical assumption.
- Left hand drive cars will mean that you will send off proximity warnings on the passenger side about every 2 minutes as you constantly drift towards gutters and pedestrians and scare your passenger.
- Right hand road driving is very difficult to adjust to, especially if you have been driving left hand side for around 35 years like me. It just feels ALL WRONG, ALL THE TIME. You don’t want to listen to any radio or chat about anything or even look left or right to observe any scenery. Just focus on following navigation and looking straight ahead.
- Re: speed limits, the only assumption we could make is that either nobody observes them, or their speedometers were halved compared to ours. We observed the speed limit pretty much everywhere (except the first day, when we had pedestrians passing us), and we annoyed everyone, and everyone passed us. I mean everyone!
- You will be angrily tooted at regularly. So often you get used to it and we just started imagining they were saying Bonjourno Amico!
- You will witness over takers, over taking, over takers, on bends! We were constantly thinking, there must be an accident about to happen, but it never did.
- Scooters and motorcycle riders are everywhere in the city/town streets. They all wear shorts/skirts, sandals, tshirts, and small dogs for protection. Apparently helmets just get in the way and make you hot. Also apparently, road rules do not apply to scooters.
- Parking does not exist, you just have to pull up where you can and get abused for a little bit (which you get used to, as per above)
- The Politzia on the road never pull anyone up for dangerous driving, even when it happens right in front of them, but if you accidentally safely park in the wrong place, and they are around – watch out, they will make your wife cry!
- The police and ambulance sirens are rather comical and whilst you know it is a serious matter, you half expect to see Benny Hill and The Goodies running down the road away from them in their undies.
- If driving to Grammichele, watch out for cows and don’t go on a Friday after 1pm as everything is closed except the Gelato shop.
Taormina Driving specifically
- Pedestrians (and cats) rule the roads, they get right of way everywhere especially if they do not make eye contact. Making eye contact is a sign of weakness and you are allowed to run them over.
- Don’t trust your car’s Navigation system as it will likely be in Italian which sounds great but doesn’t reduce stress levels or help you achieve your objective which is ‘just to get to the fricken hotel!’ Use Google maps, she will only get it wrong 20% of the time, compared to 50% that the rentals car’s system offers once you get her speaking in English.
- If staying at Casa Adele (or a nearby hotel) like us, do not use common sense and put ‘Casa Adele’ into your navigator, or you will never get there. The navigator will just take you on a frantic, sweaty, anxious circle 3 times around your destination. Put in ‘Via Dionisio I’ (last letter I for India not l for Llama, and also don’t put in ‘Casa Adele via Dionisio’ as apparently ‘Via’ means ‘Road’ or ‘Way’ or some such, so that can confuse both Google and driver.
- Teenagers in high viz shirts, sandals, shorts, and whistles, are the traffic cops, not pedestrians, so whilst difficult, try to take them seriously as they can be nasty, or maybe that’s just their friendly voices, we’re not sure yet.
- Bus drivers, police, and taxi drivers are all mates and speak loudly to each other in similar tones to above.
- If you get lost, just park wherever you want, and walk to the hotel, and then ask them to drive your car back to the hotel for you. Unfortunately they didn’t understand this request so instead provided a Map (see below) which made things a lot easier, as you can see.
- You get the drift. enjoy your driving Godere!
