Avis Rental Car is dead to Malcolm, Adam and I. We went to pick up our Avis rental car in Rome, but instead of the agent handing over keys to an Alfa Romeo, he handed us a turd sandwich.
Apparently Avis’ policy is to cancel your reservation but not tell you until you arrive at the rental agency ready to drive. They said that they don’t do one way car rentals from Italy to Germany unless there is a car from Germany that needs to go back. Which seems to suggest that someone from Germany was able to do a one way car rental.
The Avis guy’s argument fell on deaf ears as I had explicitly confirmed Avis’ a one way car rental with the European rental agent when making the reservation.
Mal and I tried to give them a piece of our minds, however, after I pounded on the counter saying they were ruining our vacation, it was tough to keep a straight face knowing that we could probably get a car somewhere else and that I don’t think I’ve pounded a countertop since I was in a high chair and my noodles were unsatisfactory.
Doesn’t mean I don’t encourage everyone to boycott Avis indefinitely.
Three hours and $700 additional dollars later, we got a Ford Climax or something like that. Not nearly as sexy or Italian as an Alfa Romeo..
Fact finding at Hertz
Sixt was our third try and they only charged a £800 one way fee.. Adam working things. Malcolm contemplating his first love.
An additional pitfall of the Avis debacle was that we had reserved a GPS system and were relying on it to get us where we were going and to politely notify us when we were driving 150 KM/hr in the wrong direction. Our new car did not come equipped with a GPS, and so we had to revert to plan: Google Map Directions. As we have discovered, if you don’t speak the language and the maps are generally useless, you will find yourself in a bit of a pickle.
This has manifested itself in us getting lost on multiple occasions. The first time after our second turn in Rome. Rome is fantastically difficult to navigate partially because the roads were urban planned by a 3 year old doodling on an etch-a-sketch and mostly because roads don’t have street names that correspond to any map in our possession.
These are direct quotes from other times we’ve been lost:
“The map has squiggly roads on it.. have we taken any squiggly roads?” –Stu
“Was that a hard right or a slight right. The directions say to take a slight right, but that seemed kind of hard” -Adam
“We’re supposed to be on SS27, but that sign just said SS28…-Stu
“Let’s just follow SS28 like it’s SS27”-Mal
“We’re supposed to be on Via _________” (insert any Italian word and butcher it).
Anyway, getting lost is just delayed gratification.
Below-
Fancy McDonalds- We spent many more minutes at McD's (5) than at the Leaning Tower of Pisa (2)
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