Sadly, it was time to leave our 4 star hotel and get back to reality. As always, the first step of our journey was to consult Gertie (our GPS) on where we were going and how long it would take. Rome to Pisa using the free roads - 9 hours, Rome to Pisa using the toll roads - 3.5 hours! Hmmm, we definitely weren't too Dutch that day and hit the Italian highways. The only unfortunate thing was that there were still insane Italian drivers on the roads ... oh well, ...

We came, we saw and we conquered. We nearly didn't come, see or conquer after the frighteningly scary bus driving we experienced but we miraculously made it into Rome. We arrived at the Colosseum and joined a tour based on advice from the Lonely Planet. The tour guide was a tad average but the Colosseum was not. What was done within those walls is rather disgusting but the building itself is an interestingly designed, monstrously sized arena. While eating our...

Another travel day today - we drove from Florence to Rome via Siena. Before leaving Florence we checked the weather forecast for Rome ... 38 degrees!! We'd kinda had enough of constantly being hot, so we slightly upgraded thanks to lastminute.com for our Rome stay. "On the road again, going places that we'd never been" ... while being regularly tooted at and passed on corners at alarming speeds by the Italians :) Ahh, great fun. We took the scenic route again...

Italian learner driving test we picked up, translated using our best Italian dictionary plus a bit of road experience to fill in the missing pieces: Question 1: If the speed limit sign displays a 110 and it is raining, what speed should you drive? a) 90km/h b) Depends how hard it's raining c) Speed limit? What's a speed limit? That number is just a suggestion. Question 2: How many lanes of traffic should be in a two lane round about? a) Two b) Three c) What's...

I had one major goal today: eat spaghetti bolognaise in Bologna. To this end we packed up after a quick breakfast, switched on the car's air conditioning and bade farewell to magical muggy Venice. We took the back roads to Bologna to see a bit more of the countryside than we would have on the highways (which are also tolled, by the way). I won't say much here about the driving itself, but leave you to infer our experience from the learners' test we managed to f...