IT is the holiday season in Europe, and which traveller hasn’t read endless articles singing the praises of the sophisticated French cuisine and lambasting Italian drivers for their insane antics on the roads, including highways?

Having flown into Rome on a work-related visit for a couple of days 25 years ago, my own experience of the Italian drivers was very limited, apart from the fact that they seemed a jolly bunch. I don’t recall any particularly dangerous manoeuvres. They loved to drive fast but not unsafely.

After we finalised our holiday plan for this year, I read up on driving in Italy. Believe me, not one piece made me feel comfortable about driving several hundred kilometres over a two-week period. We left our current home in Spain exactly a week ago where we live in a small coastal town between Valencia and Alicante.

The first day’s drive north some 600 kilometres along the sea brought us to the first overnight stop at my brother-in-law’s farmhouse in the serene Catalonia hills, overlooking from a distance the seaside resort town of Roses, about 15 minutes from the border.

Almost on every street in the old town centre, there is an art collection worthy of being found in the world’s richest museums.

The next day, we drove along the French Riviera, making the night stop in Nice at an overpriced hotel with unhelpful, almost rude staff. We were tired, so picked up some wraps/sandwiches from a deli for a quick bite before going to sleep. They were poor value for money and quite bland.

The following morning, we set off on the final day of this leg of the journey. I was tempted to make a pit stop in Monaco, but nearing the exit, saw the kind of cars that were headed there and kept driving for fear of getting an inferiority complex entering the principality in my two-year-old VW Golf compact.

Within a short drive, we were driving past Genoa on the Italian Riviera and the insane Italian driver was nowhere to be seen. The French tailgate you even when the overtaking lane is deserted, pulling out into it at the last minute when you are sure they are going to crash into you.

The Italian drivers on the twisting mountain highway with dozens of tunnels always seemed to maintain a safe, comfortable distance, and if they wished to overtake, they moved into the correct lane well ahead of the manoeuvre.

I was baffled how stereotypical most published accounts of Italian drivers have been. My wife, who travelled by car to Italy in the 1980s, says they did not care much for rules, but the police over the years have ticketed them into submission. Italy today is said to have the largest numbers of speed cameras in Europe.

Driving today on Italian motorways appears safer than in France and possibly Spain, with the latter having picked up bad French habits such as jumping lanes to overtake without as much as a perfunctory glance at the rearview/door mirrors to check if a fast-moving vehicle is already approaching in the fast lane.

Our first taste of the mind-blowing Italian food came during a motorway service area, where our experience is that one always has to pay over the odds for pretty mediocre food. We ordered three sandwiches; two vegetarian and one with meat.

The warm, freshly made paninis were mind-blowingly good; so full of flavour and very reasonably priced. Then on, it’s been juicy Tuscan steaks, pastas, pizzas and you name it. Portions are generous and the food is just so full of flavour.

We arrived in Florence at an Airbnb apartment that is part of a fair-sized Tuscan home, a former farmhouse, with lush green grounds, barely a 15-minute drive to the city centre, to a very warm welcome by our generous hostess, Maria Serena, and her husband, Guido. Within minutes, we were made to feel at home.

My partner and soulmate of 30 years, Carmen, wrote this brief background note for our daughters and I, and it is shared here it with you to get a sense of exhilaration Florence brings to you.

“If you love art, it is easy to fall prey to the Stendhal Syndrome: that physical euphoria, sometimes with lethal consequences, that the beautiful and plentiful works of legendary creative masters of Florence provoke in certain people.

“Whether it is the unattainable perfection of Michelangelo’s David in the Galleria dell Academia, or the vibrating scenes of absolute beauty in Botticelli’s most celebrated works at the Uffizi Gallery, The Birth of Venus and Spring, a normal human being feels overwhelmed and insignificant.

“Florence takes your breath away every few seconds. Patronised by the Medici family, an astonishing number of creative geniuses, flourished over more than a hundred years in the Tuscan capital, bringing to the world some of the most beautiful and celebrated art and literary works ever produced.

“From Donatello to Giotto, Brunelleschi to Vasari, Michelangelo to Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli to Verrocchio, the banking family facilitated the prosperity of art and science in the Florentine Renaissance while amassing a collection — later donated to the city permanently by the last Medici Maria Luisa — that no one has ever matched again. Florence, holds to this day, a third of all the art works in the world.

“A visit to the church of Santa Croce, puts all that in perspective, when the visitor walks through the tombs of Galileo Galilei, Michelangelo, Machiavelli, Rossini, Ghiberti and the memorial monument to another great Florentine, the Divine Comedy author, Dante Alighieri, who died in exile in Ravena.”

It would not be an exaggeration to say that almost on every street in the old town centre, on either bank of the River Arno, there is an art collection worthy of being found in the richest of museums around the world. The Medici family homes or palazzos are just one example.

The Opera del Duomo Museum, part of the cathedral whose dome is instantly recognisable around the world, is another. And we are still counting and, despite oppressive heat, not stopping. How can anyone? And don’t worry if you find yourself breathless most of the time. It isn’t your health, it is Florence.

The writer is a former editor of Dawn.

abbas.nasir@hotmail.com

Published in Dawn, July 16th, 2023