--- title: "What a Great Time to Be Alive: Three Lessons from Sixteen Nights on the Road in Italy" description: The second letter in the series, on leaving the hired car parked, going when the gardens and boats are closing for the season, and giving one night the weigh... author: Dr Marina Nani (Editor-in-Chief) updated: 2026-09-15T12:36:17.780Z canonical: https://richtravelmagazine.com/article/what-a-great-time-to-be-alive-three-lessons-from-sixteen-nights-on-the-road-in-italy image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/pexels-a-stunning-aerial-view-of-a-winding-road-lined-with-cypress--9968183.jpg categories: Mindful Travel content_type: Letter from the Editor publication: Rich Travel Magazine schema_type: Article --- In [the first letter of this series](https://richtravelmagazine.com/article/great-time-to-be-alive-three-things-travel-europe) I promised that every piece in it would end with the thing its writer brought home. This is me keeping that promise with my own trip. This autumn we drove [five stops in sixteen nights, Venice down to the Val d'Orcia](https://richtravelmagazine.com/article/italy-road-trip-venice-como-cinque-terre-florence-val-dorcia), with Lake Como, the Cinque Terre and Florence in between. We flew into Venice and out of Florence, which meant a one way hire and no doubling back. Three lessons came back with me. ## Carry the Car and Leave It Parked We hired a car for the whole sixteen nights, and only two of the five stops needed one. It went into a garage at Piazzale Roma on the first afternoon and we did not sit in it again for three days. Venice does not let a car past that square in any case, and both Como and the Cinque Terre are better served by their own boats and trains. On Como we chose one base for five nights and let the Navigazione Laghi boats do the moving between Bellagio, Varenna and Menaggio. In the Cinque Terre it stayed at Levanto while [the train did the work](https://richtravelmagazine.com/article/backpack-two-days-by-rail-from-paris-to-the-cinque-terre-of-liguria). The car earned its keep on the long transfers between stops and on the last night, where there is no railway to the places worth seeing. The rest of the time it sat still. The thing you bring for control is most useful when you put it down. We plan a trip around the means of getting about, and then the means decides the day for us. A car wants to be driven, so we drive it, and the afternoon goes on a road instead of on the water. The best days we had contained one boat crossing and one garden and nothing else. ## Go When Things Are Closing Villa Melzi at Bellagio shuts for the whole of November. The Cinque Terre boats stop around 1 November, the Via dell'Amore cuts its hours from 26 October, and Villa Carlotta drops to weekend opening in November. Villa del Balbianello stays open through November and then closes for the season until the spring. We went anyway, and the closing of the season was the reason the trip worked. Venice charged nothing at all to enter this autumn. The vaporetto down the Grand Canal had seats in the open stern after five, once the day visitors had gone back to their coaches. The same weeks gave us a chestnut festival at Rovenna above Cernobbio and grape pressing at Palanzo. A season with an edge on it makes you pay attention. When a garden is open for three more weeks you go and look at it. When it is open all year you photograph the gate and tell yourself you will come back. Build the trip around the calendar instead of fighting it, and accept before you leave home that one thing you wanted will be shut. ## One Night Can Weigh as Much as Five We gave Como five nights and the Val d'Orcia one, and the one night has stayed with me as long as the five. The light on the cypress roads between San Quirico and Monticchiello is low and long by four in the afternoon in October. Pienza sits on its ridge and Montalcino on the hill opposite, and one night was enough to see them both and drive the roads between them. Bagno Vignoni has a thermal basin where its village square should be, and the hot water in it has been used since Etruscan and Roman times. The village stands on the Via Francigena, and Pius II and Catherine of Siena are both said to have stopped there. None of that needed a week. The length of a stay does not decide its weight. What decides it is whether you arrive with nothing planned for the last hour of the day. In Florence we kept one evening with nothing booked at all, and out of four nights there that is the evening I remember. > "And a stone from the shore in your shoe, so the place walks home with you." > — After the old wedding rhyme Mine is a real one this time. I picked it up on the shore at Vernazza on our walking day, and it sits on my desk where I can see it while I work. When I take the walk after dinner in a street where nobody else does, the place walks home with me. This series will carry your lessons as well as ours. If you went somewhere and came back with one thing you still do, write to us and tell us what it was and where you found it. Keep it short and plain.