We arrived home from Italy yesterday to find Brian Mulroney testifying on Parliament Hill. Once I turned on the television I couldn’t turn it off: it was compelling television, both because of Mulroney’s skilled rhetoric and because of the questioning (and sometimes goading) he received from the members.

The most amazing thing about Mulroney’s testimony is that by the end of it he had me thinking that it was the most normal thing in the world to have $225,000 in cash squirreled away in safe deposit boxes, cash that doesn’t get income tax paid on it until the heat is on five years later.

It’s only on sober second thought that the craziness of it all bubbles to the top.

If you have an opportunity to watch the video, I recommend it: you’ll learn a lot about how to win friends and influence people.

If you have cause to drive in Italy — and if you want to visit the hinterlands you likely will find yourself navigating the hills and valleys in a rental car — you may be daunted by the prospect of an otherworldly road experience. I know I was. So here’s a small guide — based, mind you, on only two weeks experience — for North Americans looking to take the plunge.

First, rent the smallest possible car you can that will fit your party and its luggage. There are 2 or 3 classes of rental cars smaller than the smallest possible car you can rent in the U.S. or Canada; get one of those if you can. You’re going to find yourself driving through impossibly narrow streets and alleys at times, and if you rent that comfortable-looking Volvo sedan you’re going to regret it. You’re also going to pay about double what you’re used to for gasoline in Italy (albeit in more fuel efficient cars), and you’re going to want the maximum parking flexibility. So go small.

Of course when you’re speeding down the autostrada at 120 km/h in your tiny SMART car with trucks all around and BMWs zooming by you doing 180 km/h you’re going to feel tiny and vulnerable. But that is a good feeling to have, because you are tiny and vulnerable, and there’s no use trying to insulate yourself from that with bigger doors or better shocks.

You’ll have all the regular chains — AVIS, Hertz, etc. — available to you at most airports, plus European or Italian agencies as well. The past two times I’ve gone looking, booking through easycar, which often acts as a broker for others, has resulted in rates 50% lower than anything else I’ve found. Your mileage may vary.

Next, get familiar in advance with the basic Italian road signs: knowing the difference between “Do Not Enter” and “No Parking Here” is really useful. As is knowing words like “Exit” and “Entrance.” If you get an International Driving Permit from CAA or AAA you’ll likely get a handy booklet about all this; study it a little on the plane ride over.

You will find yourself paying a lot more road tolls than you are used to. Make sure you leave the airport with some cash. Generally you’ll enter a toll road and receive a ticket from an automated machine and then, when you exit sometime later, you’ll pay the poll either to a person or a machine. The machines take bills and coins and have English text, and it’s pretty easy to figure everything out. Just be sure to stay out of the lanes marked “Telepass” — you don’t have one of those. Just use the lanes marked with a graphic of cash and you’ll be fine.

As to driving itself, it takes some getting used to. The best mindset to enter with is that you’re going to become part of a living traffic organism. If you come to understand how that organism works, and what other parts expect from you and what you can expect from them, you’ll do okay. If you try to drive like you’re in Summerside then you will get quickly frustrated (and will likely attract the wrath of other drivers).

Of course the only way to actually learn how the organism works is to join right in. So expect some early wrath enduring and just try not to do anything too stupid you’re first time out (you can always take the next exit instead of veering across 3 lanes and over a median).

In general it’s safe to assume that absolutely anything is possible, and indeed likely. Spaces you wouldn’t think that delivery truck could squeeze into — it will. The car that looks like it’s pulling out to pass you on a blind mountain curve actually is.

The traffic wants to flow; anything that stops the flow will be rejected or routed around like a foreign invader. You never, ever stop for pedestrians, even at crosswalks. Get used to roundabouts, and understand how they work, because there are thousands of them, and the flow demands you glide through them without hesitation.

While driving on the highways and super-highways will be familiar to you — with the exception of the very, very, very fast drivers and the 120 km/h speed limit — driving inside cities, town and villages is likely a breed apart from anything you’ve ever experienced. Italian cities evolved long before the automobile so they’re not optimized for it. There are more one-way streets, more “turn right, then left, then right, then left, then U turn” moves required. And, as I suggested above, narrower streets than seems physically possible.

The best way to know if something is possible — “could my car actually fit in that tiny space” — is to watch what others are doing. Indeed that’s the best way to learn everything you need to know.

Once the driving stops, the search for parking starts. In my experience almost every community of any size (with the possible exception of Milan) has parking available somewhere. Usually your best tactic if you want to see the centre of a given town is to get off the highway and follow the signs for “Centro”. Then you look for the big white-on-blue “P” signs, which will generally lead you to underground parking garages (in towns and cities), or community parking lots just outside the village centre (for smaller places). Sometimes you’ll pay for parking, sometimes you won’t.

If you’re booking a hotel in your next city along the highway, ask if they have parking. Suburban hotels likely will have their own lot; downtown hotels sometimes have a garage of their own, or an arrangement with a nearby garage, but you’ll likely pay 15 to 25 EUR a day for the privilege (although we only paid 5 EUR a day in the off season in Genoa).

Of course it’s possible — very possible — to visit Italy without a car at all. You can take the train, or the bus, between major cities, and even into the hinterlands. But by doing so you will miss the joy of taking a random exit off the highway and finding yourself, 5 km up the road, in the middle of a 1000 year old village with a great view of the Alps. The next time we’re in Italy we’ll likely not rent a car; Florence, Rome and Venice beckon and there’s no reason to have a car there. But this trip I’ve certainly glad we had one, as it allowed us to see parts of the country that would have otherwise been unaccessible to us.

As I sit here in our hotel in Revere, MA, by my reckoning we’ve been up since 1:55 a.m. local time when we got up in our hotel north of Milan. So it’s been a long day. I am always confused by the fact that it seems to take 2 hours longer to travel west across the Atlantic than it does to travel east; as a result just as you’re thinking “well, at least this flight will be over soon” you check your watch and realize you’ve still got 4 more hours to go.

Alitalia prove to be an efficient and capable airline. There was no “wow” factor, but nothing went wrong, all their lines were short, and we arrived early going both ways. Milan’s Malpensa airport was a joy to travel through, especially compared to airports like Heathrow and Frankfurt: it’s compact, uncrowded, and doesn’t force you to march through a obstacle course of “retail experiences” on the way to the boarding gates.

As it turned out, our “airport hotel” — Hotel Motel Luna — was 2 km from the shore of the famed Lake Maggiore. Alas we arrived after dark, and hurried off to the airport in the morning, so didn’t lay eyes on it. Another time.

The hotel, although a fair distance from Milan Malpensa, turned out to be an excellent choice: not only was the hotel itself beautiful, clean, and staffed by an extremely capable manager, but it was a straight 120 km/h shot down the highway to the airport, a trip to about 20 minutes with all the planets aligned.

The ongoing trucker strike in Italy played havoc with our plans to return our rental car with a full gas tank: every gas station we passed on the way to the airport had huge 1970s-style lines of up to 25 to 50 cars, in some cases extending out onto the highway itself. Fortunately our car rental agency — Locauto — was accommodating and only charged us regular price for the gas we didn’t fill up. Seems like we got out of Italy while the getting was good; the New York Times reports:

In the northern city of Milan, Antonia Carapacchi, owner of Citta del Sole, an upscale toy store, registered “a distinct drop in sales and clients” in the last two days, the result, he speculated, of parents choosing to use increasingly sparse gasoline on more pressing needs. Unlike clothes or books, he said, toys have only one important season, Christmas, the moment the unions decided to strike. “They’re going to plunge the entire industry into crisis,” he predicted gloomily.

We’re back to the Island tomorrow, weather-willing.

Fourteen years ago [[Catherine]] and I were passing through Napanee, Ontario on our way to our new home in Prince Edward Island. After dinner her grandmother Hazel caught me alone in the kitchen and slipped me an envelope with some cash in it. “We realize that you and Cathy probably aren’t going to get married,” she said, “so this move is as close as we’ll come, and we wanted to give you something.”

It was the nicest thing anyone ever did for us.

Hazel died this week. I will miss her dearly.

The next time you are in Oleggio Castello, Italy, be sure to dine at Trattoria della Commedia. We had a wonderful last meal in Italy there. The gnocchi in gorgonzola and honey was particularly mind-blowing.

Our Big Activity for today — and our last for Milan — was to visit the Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci, the “National Museum of Science and Technology.”

We’d been in Vinci itself, or at least nearby, earlier in the week, and had flirted with other aspects of Leonardoisme our entire trip, but had yet to dive in. This was our chance.

And by all evidence the museum is a fantastic one, full of interactive exhibits, labs, and fun activities. Alas almost all of the fun is available only if you’re in a school group or if you happen to visit on weekend afternoons. Otherwise you’re left to gaze forlornly through the sealed doors of the “iLabs” and pass on to static old-school exhibits on things like “the history of nickel” and “the wonders of plastic.”

All was not lost, however: their telecommunications exhibit had promise (although Lisbon does a much better job at the switchboard simulator), and a special exhibition about women and their bodies was well done (Oliver is now fully labially literate). They also have a very neat collection of ships, locomotives and airplanes, and a retired submarine onsite.

Finding a parking space for the museum — our visit was on our way out of town — was an interactive adventure in its own right. The traditional “parking garage” doesn’t seem to exist in Milan, so one is left to battle everyone else for the small number of on-street spaces. Once we found a space (it took about 20 minutes and lots of looping around) I spent the next several hours absolutely convinced that our car was going to be impounded (a suspicion heightened by the “No Parking, 0-24” sign on the street).

Fortunately my worries were for nothing, as the car was there when we returned.

And then began our struggle to get out of town. Without a map. With only a vague idea of where we were going. Somehow — largely due to Catherine’s talent for improvisational navigation — we succeeded, and here we are in the Hotel Motel Luna, a self-described “airport hotel” that seems like its awfully far from the airport (although they tell us we only need to leave 20 minutes to get there in the morning).

In a few minutes we’ll strike out to find a place for our last supper in Italy; in the morning we head to Boston.

Jacques Hébert, a great Canadian, has died.

When we last talked we were outside of Florence pondering which way we should head. We headed south, to San Gimignano, drawn in by the cover of our travel guide and a vague memory of scenes from Tea with Mussolini.

Our route San Gimignano from Savigliano took us down SS429, a wonderful country road that was a welcome change from the monotony of the super-highway. Along the way we stopped at Castelnuovo d’Elsa, a pleasant small village that afforded stunning views of the surrounding area. No matter what anti-Tuscany biases you may harbour after Frances Mayes et al, it is a stunningly beautiful countryside.

We arrived in San Gimignano around 1:00 p.m. and immediately set about trying to find a place to stay. With the tourist office closed until 2:00 p.m., we took a brief detour for lunch (resulting in the best cheese + eggplant + tomato sandwich I’ve ever had). Once the tourist office opened, we took the friendly clerk’s recommendation, and booked two nights at Fattoria Poggio Alloro, an agriturismo — farm vacation — just 4km away.

It was a good recommendation: Fattoria Poggio Alloro turned out to be a working sustainable farm with cattle, pigs, chickens, and rabbits as well as vineyards, olive groves, and a saffron crop. The accommodations were anything but rustic, and they put on a nice breakfast in a room with a roaring fire. To say nothing of its hilltop location affording a stellar view of San Gimignano and environs. It was the perfect place to spend a few nights.

Thursday night we headed just up the road to the small village of Ulignano to Zaghe & Doicce to have, and I do not exaggerate, the best pizza of our lives.

On Friday we headed south to Monteriggioni, a walled village just north of Siena, the highlight of which was the small civic museum where we got to try on pieces of armour (the whole “walled village” thing was neat as well).

We returned to San Gimignano on Friday afternoon and had a good tour around, punctuated by a climb to the top of the Torre Grossa, the tallest of the 13 towers (of an original 72) in the town, another in the continuing series “brave Oliver drags his father, against his better judgment, to the top of a very tall thing.”

After a chilly Friday night back at the Fattoria, we headed north this morning, skirting Florence and driving up high enough to experience a small blizzard before heading south again toward Bologna where we then turned left to Milan. The super-highway along the stretch is a beautiful piece of road: straight as an arrow, newly-paved, four lanes in each direction; I didn’t slow much below 120 km/h from Bologna to Parma, and I was among the slowest cars on the road.

When it seemed possible that we might actually make it all the way to Milan in one fell swoop, we stopped at a rest stop just outside of Modena to consider our options. Finding wifi in the air (6 EUR/hour), I hotel-surfed and found Hotel Del Corso. They didn’t have a room for tonight, but they did have space for us on Sunday and Monday, so we reserved and made tentative plans to spend tonight in Parma, just up the road.

Twenty minutes later we were checking in to My Hotels Villa Ducale, a hotel selected primarily because it looked so weird — a sort of cross between an old Italian village and a space ship. We ended up with a huge two-room suite with a bathroom larger than our house.

As we were getting settled in the room, I set about looking for excitement in Parma with a simple Google search for “parma kids” that led me to Xmas Children, an event described as follows:

Children will be the unchallenged protagonists of everything contained in Xmas Children… namely mountains of every kind of product invented, designed and manufactured for them. Plus an abundance of open playspaces where they can run, paint, construct, mess about, dirty themselves and play in total freedom. Conjurors, clowns, jugglers, acrobats, puppets and puppet booths, storytellers, musicians and dancers, films and cartoons to set off their fantasy. Nine marvellous days overflowing with surprises and entertainment.

Was it even possible to not check out such an event? As it turned out, Xmas Children was a sort of “trade show for kids” sponsored by the Kinder Surprise Egg people and consisting of a combination of exhibitors showing the latest in baby gear (fantastic 900 EUR buggies, etc.) and the aforementioned “abundance of open playspaces.” For the commercialness of it all, it was actually pretty fun, and there was lots for Oliver to do, from making Christmas decorations out of recycled materials to learning the dance steps from High School Musical. And of course Kinder Eggs were in abundance. We spent a frenzied two hours taking it all in.

Around 6:00 p.m. we headed into Parma proper, which turns out to have a very pleasant downtown filled with pedestrians and bicycles and in the midst of its civic Christmas tree lighting just as we arrived.

We wandered about for an hour, waiting for restaurants to open, and then found ourselves in an emergency “Oliver needs to pee” event, which paniced us all over the place looking for a cafe with toilet; after 15 minutes we found one, and when all that was over we decided to settle for a quick meal of spinach pizza and headed back to the hotel. Where I sit right now.

All in all three very good days that all just sort of spilled out at random in the way that things sometimes do. Tomorrow we’ll drive into Milan where we’ll spend Sunday and Monday nights; Tuesday night is a a hotel closer to the airport, and Wednesday we fly to Boston, overnight there, and then fly home to Charlottetown on Thursday.

We are apparently in Savigliano tonight. Truth be told we are not entirely sure where Savigliano is.

We reached here by driving south from Genoa along the coast and making our way to Pontedera, home of the Piaggio Museum. After an afternoon of lusting after their amazing collection of Vespas (my favourite was the 1965 90 Super Sprint in red) we fumbled awkwardly towards Florence.

We fumbled as our commitement to Florence is weak; we enjoyed Genoa, and lucked into a hotel that worked, but are reluctant to do battle with another Big Confusing City so soon (the counterpoint, of course, is the “massive collection of amazing art” argument).

And so we have fumbled to Savigliano. Which, it turns out, is 47 minutes west of Florence. And just a little bit south of Vinci, “Leonardo’s home town.”

Appropriately enough we are staying in the Hotel Da Vinci, a completely modern hotel with frosted glass sinks, hardwood floors, and excellent restaurant, and a perverse attachment to sans-serif pop typefaces from the 1960s.

Whether we will take 47 minutes to see the cradle of Western Art, or head off into the Tuscan countryside tomorrow morning depends on our mood after breakfast. Stay tuned.

We settled on Genova for our first stop. Found an inexpensive, central hotel that lets us park for 5 EUR a night (in a garage the drive down to which boggles the mind) and has a pull-out bed for Oliver and Alice and Forest Rangers (in Italian) on the TV. Spent this morning at children’s science museum, and off into the windy old streets of the city this afternoon. If I get my way we’ll drive south tomorrow to the other side of Pisa to take in the Vespa museum. It’s 19 degrees and sunny here — I can’t believe our luck with the weather so far.