I have always been afraid to drive in Italy!!  Not because, as is generally known, Italians ignore rules and regulations; not because the signs measure kilometers and not miles; not because I don’t the directions to where I’m going….but because I have never been sure I could find my way out of and then back in to the city!  Whether the city be Roma or Firenze or wherever.

I could always picture myself going around and around some round-about, not being able to get off; or, driving wrong way both up and down one way streets in the historic center.

So, it is not with a little pride that I share with you that I not only rented a car myself last weekend, an adorable Fiat Cinquecento, as seen below:

But I successfully drove it out of Florence, through Tuscany, to the area around Val d’Orcia in the south of…