Driving in Italy isn’t for the faint hearted. Especially when you come from Australia or UK and you’re used to driving on the left.
I won’t lie, I was panicked at the thought of driving my mum around Puglia for three weeks.
I booked a car online from Budget – a small Toyota Yaris automatic. Whilst I can drive a stick / manual car, I just wanted an auto to take the stress away of using the opposite hand to change gears.
Hire car companies in Italy, especially in the south, are known for “upgrading” to a bigger car, which I really, really didn’t want. I wanted the smallest car possible. But I didn’t have a choice, it was the size of a Toyota Corolla, and in the end it worked out just fine.
The good news, we never got lost, not once, and were able to find parking easily at every town we visited. Here’s how:
Driving in Puglia
Top tips for driving in Italy:
SIM card with data
Make sure you have a local data eSim plan so you can use your phone as a GPS in your language – I use Australia e-sim company SimsDirect – use this link for a discount (affiliate)
GPS
Bring a phone mount so you can glance at your phone GPS easily. Often it would say turn right, but there would be two streets close to each other on the right. Being able to follow the map was super helpful. I brought with me my Quadlock mag mount that attaches to the air vent, it was perfect and it also kept my phone charged. (I did need to buy a longer cable in Bari).
Quadlock Mag Mount for the car
Parking
When heading to a destination, search for parking areas or stations and set that as your destination in your GPS. It might mean you pay €6 or so for parking but it’s better than driving endlessly looking for free street parking and then trying to park into a tight space with traffic zooming around.
Always park outside the historical centre. If you drive into a Zona Limita or limited zone, you will end up with a fine. We made this mistake in 2010 and drove in and out three times while looking for parking in Lucca (Tuscany), and got slugged with three fines sent to our home address in Australia.
Parking meters take credit cards, and many are connected to the Easy Park app, so you might like to set that up.
Take a photo of your car number plate (the ‘targa’) as you need to enter that into many of the machines.
Parking in Puglia – take a photo of the number plate ‘targa’ in Italian
Passenger rules
Yes, I set rules in the car for Mum: no talking in the car please. I needed to concentrate and didn’t want to take my eyes off the road to ‘look at the cute farmhouse’ or the ‘gnarled olive tree’. And it worked. After 4-5 drives, I found my groove and I was able to relax, and didn’t need a stiff vodka after every journey. And then we could happily chat in the car.
It’s all ‘right’
Stick to the right lane on Autostradas, the slow lane. Overtake as you need and go back to the right.
Eyes in front, always. Don’t worry about what that tail-gater is doing behind you.
Take a deep breath and put on your big girl pants. You’ve got this 👊
And yes we really did drive past a roadside fire 🔥 – check out this video on Instagram
Have you got any driving tips for Italy?