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Renting a car and driving to Puglia
By Patrick Robertson
At the end of our week in Salerno on the Amalfi Coast we are renting a car for the next part of our trip.
Car rentals are still expensive since the pandemic. The cost for our small Fiat 500 for two weeks is $1,200. The base price is $500, insurance is $300, taxes are $100 and the drop-off fee is $300. We are dropping the car off in Palermo, the capital of Sicily at the end of our two weeks.
There are many car rental companies in Italy. Most of them have really bad reputations with pages of bad reviews. Their prices come up at less than half the actual price because they do not include the mandatory Italian insurance and taxes or any drop-off fees you may incur.
Save yourself a lot of time and hassle and just rent with either Avis or Budget. They are the only rental car companies that do not have hundreds of complaints. Also, you can use their free loyalty programs like Budget’s Fastbreak program where you just flash your valid drivers license, pickup your keys and avoid the long lines that can take up to an hour.
Italy requires an International Drivers Permit for renting cars. You can get the IDP from BCAA for $30 along with two passport pictures. I do not have one and have never had a problem renting a car in Italy.
For Avis and Budget, as long as your license is written in Roman letters according to their policy and not Cyrillic, Chinese or Arabic they will accept your license. That has been my experience.
We are driving to Puglia that is the heel of Italy. Beautiful beaches and coastal cities with all the amenities make it a destination spot for local Italians. While not popular with international visitors, it is getting more and more exposure each year as people discover it is much cheaper and quieter than the major Italian tourist places.
The drive from Salerno on the Amalfi Coast to the very tip of the heel takes about five hours.
We have rented a masseria, a typical fortified stone farmhouse that is protected by stacked rock walls. Ours in on the Adriatic Sea close to Dame Hellen Mirrren’s masseria close to Santa Maria de Leuca.
It also turns out that an old friend was born and raised in Nordo just half an hour from where we will be staying. She still has family there and we are going to meet them to spend a day as
they love to practice their English.
Along the way is Matera that became infamous in the 1950s when it was deemed the “shame of Italy.”
One of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world there have been people living in these caves or sassi for the past 8,000 years. After the unification of Italy in 1860 Matera fell into abject poverty. People lived in the small cave dwellings. People and livestock cohabitated without running water or sewer systems. Disease was rampant.
In 1952, all 16,000 inhabitants were moved a few miles away to a number of housing developments.
Today, Matera is a UNESCO heritage site and was named the European Capital of Culture in 2019. The sassi have been made into galleries, studios, boutique hotels and restaurants.
Matera was the setting for the opening scene of the 2021 James Bond movie, No Time to Die.
Just east of Matera is a land of olive groves and trulli. Trulli are unique dwellings made of dry stacked flat stone with conical roofs. They are only found in the northern area of Puglia.
In 1996 the trulli of Alberobello were declared a UNESCO heritage site. Since then all the trulli have now been changed into tourist shops and rental accommodations and the streets are packed with tourists taking pictures.
Fortunately there are several smaller towns close by that are also built with trulli and quaint and picturesque without the crowds. We have rented a trullo in the countryside for four nights while we explore the Itria Valley.
Next month – Calabria, the toe of Italy.
Patrick Robertson Photo
– Patrick Robertson is a travel writer and long-time resident of Fernie. He is an expert in planning independent travel and finding budget travel deals. Go to his website for more information and pictures of this trip to Vidanta Nuevo Vallarta.
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