Driving to Rome

Our journey started early to Italy. Our alarms went off at 3 am and our flight left st 6. Good thing we feel asleep the night before or should I say afternoon at 3!  So Justin was the brave soul who decided he would drive in Italy since I drove in Germany two years ago. The car rental went smoothly until we saw that it was a manual...well we looked at our booking papers and we booked a manual on accident after carefully only looking for automatics. Good thing Justin can drive a manual we just wanted him to not have to worry about having to drive a manual and drive in a foreign country. But we couldn't get an automatic so we just went on about our drive.

We quickly decided driving in Italy was not easy when it took 10 minutes to find our way out of the parking lot. We were warned that the Italians were crazy drivers and so when someone tried to pull out in front of Justin he refused to be a push over behind the wheel. What followed was a game of chicken that Justin won. The side effect however included Justin almost running over his first Italian and speeding through a red light intersection. After that his confidence was shaken but once we got on the highway he did great despite the ridiculous diving patterns in work zones...  at one point oncoming traffic was diverted on to our side of the autostrasse. **Quick note: this is a divided highway at 120 km/hr**. Its kinda scary to be diving down the high way then....wtf, there are cars on our side of the road going in the opposite direction. 

Turning into Rome brought on higher anxiety. At one point I was laughing so hard because they really just do whatever they want. Men and women on mopeds whipping in between cars while texting and talking on cell phones....cars missing turns and going the wrong way on roads to get where they need to be....crazy!  if you cant tell the mopeds are those to watch out for (not to take away from the crazy car drivers...haha) for they go into tight spaces and get to the front of the lines at lights.  

Most roads don't have lines and people just drive where they want to...most cars have dings because the drivers are crazy. Justin did a great job an we found our parking deck on the first try. Justin was very happy when he got in there...here is his relived face.

Whew!