A License to . . .

not kill or steal. Just drive.

For the last 10 days or so, Ross has been backpacking through France and Italy. He'll be gone nearly a month.

Our visits to Italy so far have been to barely cross over the border so Jim and I decided we'd join Ross during the last week of his journey.

Since October is grape harvesting time in Tuscany, what better way to travel to see the countryside and stop when we want?

That's what we thought too. How hard can that be? We've got a car and we can drive.

It should have been that simple.

As I was googling and ogling the Tuscan countryside, I also googled "driving in Italy". Really no need to google it because it can't be done.

Driving there, I mean.

Not unlike many European countries, Italy's historic cities have what are called ZTL zones. That means zona a traffico limitato. Even if you don't speak Italiano you can figure that one-o out. And these zones pretty much cover the entire city. Cars are allowed, but only between the minutes of 8:17 and 8:24 and only if you have a special permit and only if the stars are aligned . . .

Actually if you have a hotel in the ZTL, you can drive there just long enough to unload your luggage, but you'd better hope the hotel has been nice enough to fax your license plate number to the local police station. Why? Because there are cameras that take photos of every license plate and months later you will get a hefty ticket in the mail for violating the ZTL rules.

Here's the good part, I read that last year, Florence alone handed out 90 tickets every minute for a total of a handsome 52 million Euro in revenue. Milan, which is considerably bigger than Florence, brought in 81 million Euro. In one year. I have yet to find numbers for Rome, but can only imagine.

Mappa ofa the Roma ZTLa

Rome is 582 sq. miles and this ZTL only covers about 23 sq. miles, but, incredibilmente, it covers everythinga you want to see-a in Roma.

Ironically, you can drive in Vatican City - just outside the ZTL (over the river and not shown on this map) where the speed limit is 19 mph. The entire city (which is actually a country) is a total of .17 sq. miles and you can walk across the whole thing in under 15 minutes. I'm thinking a car is unnecessary.

So it was decided. We would not be driving in historic cities - not even to park the car.

Next, I google parking lots outside the ZTL zone and come upon a website that indicates driving in Italy requires a special driver's license. Seriously?

That's right. One must have an International Driver's Permit. It's a miracle we weren't stopped before on our border crossing excursions. We actually encountered a police roadblock on our last visit over the border and mercifully they had already pulled over another car and waved us on. We had no idea how lucky we were.

So an International Driver's Permit is all we need. The IDP. How do we get one?

Well . . . I had one . . . for 3 glorious days . . . but not any more.

Next up . . . "That was waaaay too easy".