This Diary, which I will bring to you in parts, is an account of my three week adventure in a Fiat 500 car in Italy in October 2017, retold from an audio and visual diary maintained during the road trip.

In August 2016 I suggested to my partner that we study Italian. He was hesitant, bilingual since childhood, but unlike I, who had studied both French and Portuguese, he had never studied a foreign language and felt it was not his cup of tea. I seduced him with the prospect of a classroom romance, with me, of course, and a romantic code language for us and he was sold.

We took weekend classes at our local Istituto Italiano di Cultura and our love for the language and the culture began to grow. Contrary to his belief, my partner picked up the language with ease and studied with much gusto, all the while casually flirting with me. Incidentally the word gusto’s origin is Italian and in Italian it means taste, and Italy Is all about taste isn’t it. We became ardent Italophiles, feeling more at home in Italy than at home.

In this backdrop I come to the Fiat 500 car or the Cinquecento (five hundred in Italian) as it is fondly called in Italy, being one of the icons of Italy we decided that we must do a road trip in it. The road trip was to begin in Perugia, Umbria.

We booked a car through Economycarrentals, a site we had used before and were satisfied with, there never having had any problems with the booking and the terms, never having had any hidden charges foisted on us. As you know, when you book a rental car, you book a category so our booking said ‘Fiat 500 Automatic or similar’, there was no guarantee we would get a Fiat 500, but when choosing the service provider we had opted for ‘Sicily by Car’ having researched through reviews etc. that they did actually have a fleet of Fiat 500s.

Perugia is a lovely Italian hill town. It is the capital of the region of Umbria, Tuscany’s neighbour to the east. It is famous for its universities the University of Perugia and the University for Foreigners which since 1921 teaches Italian language and Italian culture to foreign students. It is easy to navigate as there are escalators on three sides of it, which reduce the trudging up and down hills entailed in other hill towns and the  Minimetro that is burrowed into the hill connects the train station, which has direct trains from Rome, to the upper town. To get to Perugia from Rome there is also the cheap and comfortable option of Flixbus which stops close to the Pian di Massiano stop of the Minimetro.

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Perugia has a perfectly preserved Centro Storico or Historical City Center and numerous restaurants to savour Umbrian cuisine. It is well connected to other towns in Umbria by train and by bus and makes for a good base to visit Assisi, Spello, Arezzo, Corciano, Lago di Trasimeno, Fogliano by public transport. The students make the town vibrant and rather noisy till late at night over weekends.

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We reached the Sicily by Car office in Perugia on the morning of 30th September, 2017 and were ecstatic on getting our Fiat 500, one because we wanted an iconic road trip and two because a compact car is a boon to navigate the narrow roads of Italian towns and villages. The Fiat 500 is a two-door car, which, there being just the two of us, was not a problem, the boot is small, you can fit in one cabin luggage size suitcase and one medium, the rear seat of the car, if there are no passengers, provides ample space do dump stuff. The car looks small but even with our longer than average limbs and ample proportions we felt no discomfort getting in or out of the car, nor did we feel cramped for leg space even during long journeys. We carry our own Tomtom, satellite navigation device as this not only saves on the additional rent entailed in hiring one from the car rental company but also enables us to pre-programme the addresses and avoids the feeling of having a new stranger to adjust to on every trip. We were headed to the Dolomite mountains due north of Perugia, with our first night stop planned at Monselice, a village which was chosen because it had a reasonably priced hotel with good reviews, just off the highway.

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We enjoy the countryside so avoided the fastest route via the Autostrada-Highway which would have taken us west to Florence and then north and instead took the Strada Statale-State Highway via Lake Trasimeno, Arezzo and Ferrara to Monselice a total distance of about 350 kms. It was a sunny day yet cool and we were in our element. We listened to great music on the radio, parroting the presenters to improve our pronunciation watched the rolling countryside and vineyards go by and felt we were in Utopia.

We first drove along Lago di Trasimeno or Lake Trasimeno which is where Umbria meets Tuscany, a beautiful lake with several pretty towns, each with its own hill fort, dotting its shores. There are three islands in the Lake and a boat ride from Passignano sul Trasimeno to Isola Maggiore, the biggest island, a steep yet satisfying hike up to the beautiful 15th Century church and a peaceful amble back admiring the fauna and the twinkling blue waters of the lake, stopping to savour your tasty picnic lunch makes for a wonderful day trip in itself. Or, go to the island and come back for a delicious and beautifully plated meal at Ristorante B43, as we had done on an earlier date via train from Perugia.

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Next we drove past Arezzo, a town made famous worldwide by Roberto Benigni’s epic film La Vita è Bella – Life is Beautiful. Arezzo for a lazy or tired traveler has the added advantage of not requiring any uphill treks other than the gentle slope of the Piazza Grande-the main square. Also, a town where we ate very well, the Pizza al Taglio, or the pizza by weight, from the Pizzeria del Corso on Corso Italia is the best we have ever tasted in Italy. There are also good slow food restaurants I must mention the Trattoria Saraceno where we have on an earlier trip had delicious meals.

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Trasimeno and Arezzo, had been visited by us earlier so today we stopped at Ferrara in the region of Emilia-Romagna for a late lunch. Thanks to the Tomtom we located a Parking at a comfortable walking distance from the town center, got a two-hour pre-paid parking ticket from the machine, displayed it on the dashboard and pranced off to visit this new town. Another reluctant walker’s delight, no steep climbing necessary, a wonderful town square with the ubiquitous Pizza al Taglio shops in the many lanes that run off the town square for a quick lunch or a snack, the beautiful 12th Century Duomo-Cathedral, with its three-layered marble façade admired within and without, we stopped to pick-up gelato or ice-cream as we mere mortals call it and got back to our car and drove off towards Monselice in the Veneto region.

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Such is the wonder of Italy that we knew in advance that even poor Monselice, chosen only because of its proximity to the Highway would have some treasures in store for us, we were not disappointed. A quick check-in done at the Hotel Blue Dream, booked well in advance without any pre-payment through Booking.com, town map in tow, we left our car at the hotel, crossed the highway and walked into Monselice, a quiet town, well worth a visit, it was getting dark so we did not climb up to the Rocca-Fortress or to the Seven Churches instead we roamed the town center, admired the shop windows, observed from a café in the Piazza Mazzini the gentle rhythm of the towns people winding up their shops, heading home and figuring out dinner from and then proceeded to have yet another fantastic meal with excellent local food, wine and cheese at Kairòs Wine & Food and took a leisurely stroll back to our Hotel and fell asleep pleasantly tired and satiated to the beat of the DJ playing at a wedding function taking place at the Hotel.

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We woke up early the next morning, had a sumptuous breakfast and headed off to Padova, which was only a stone’s throw away. We had chosen Hotel Garibaldi on the outskirts with a bus stop out front so we could leave our car parked in the free hotel parking and head to Padova center by bus, to avoid the tension that ensues in driving through a busy city center, however this was not to be, it being a Sunday there was no bus service, this is often the case in Italy. The weather was inclement, the car beckoned. Not wanting our spirit to be dampened and emboldened by our previous day’s hassle-free parking in Ferrara, after briefly considering taking a Taxi into the Padova city center, we let Tomtom lead us to a huge parking lot just a 200 mt. walk from Padova’s mammoth square, aptly named Prato della Valle – Meadow of the Valley measuring 90,000 Sq. Mts. It is the largest square in Italy, and one of the largest in Europe. It is like a solar system with an elliptical orbit, the people circulating around it on foot or cycles the planets, cars are not permitted, the park in the center the sun, which everyone eventually gravitates towards. One can, I guess on a sunny day just spend hours lounging around the park. We had the added attraction of a fair being underway. We walked around with the locals admiring the stalls having a chiacchierata-chat here and a merendina– snack, there. We then strolled raincoat hoods up, in silent bonhomie, to the Basilica of St. Antony, where we were blessed to see a discretion of priests, resplendent in their clerical formal wear of red, white and black, walking in ceremonial configuration in the preparation of Sunday Mass.

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We stepped out of the Basilica and continued our meandering through the city, a city of numerous beautiful shop lined squares. In Piazza delle Erbe we chanced upon a group of hospital employees preparing fresh gnocchi, a pasta, to sell and raise funds for the Hospital. Gnocchi literally meaning ‘lumps’ in Italian, it is made from potatoes and flour, we had found lunch, we opted to have it with Bolognese sauce. It was piping hot and scrumptious and the steps around the fountain were put to use for wonderful al fresco dining, the rain giving welcome respite. The lunching locals sitting around this public dining room chatted amiably and lunch done at an economical 8€ a piece we wandered off in search of our daily dose of gelato.

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We walked ahead into the Piazza dei Signori, bought our gelatos and wandered beyond the clock tower to a small square with artists displaying their paintings, admired their work and eventually completed the orbit around Prato della Valle back to our car, we had left a prepaid parking ticket for 6 hours, not a second was wasted.  

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Tired and Padova dusted we drove back to our Hotel for a much needed rest in anticipation of our impending drive into the Dolomites the next day. Follow the next part of the journey on winding mountain roads, through high mountain passes to the Italian autonomous region of Trentino-Alto Adige.

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