"Upgraded" to the World's Smallest Car?

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I head down for my last breakfast here in Lipari. The staff have stuck the handle back on the hotel's front door so it looks much better now. I notice a copy of "The Godfather" on the bookshelf in reception and wonder what the significance of this might be. The hotel dog doesn't seem to remember me from yesterday and tries to bite my arm off yet again. That aside we've really enjoyed our time here and we're very sad to be leaving.

We catch the ferry across to Milazzo on Sicily's north-east tip where we've arranged to hire a car. We're told that it's our lucky day, and that we've been upgraded. In our experience this usually means a bigger vehicle, but as we wander up and down the street outside we can't seem to find any biggish cars that match the number plate we've been given. Hire car lady clarifies that our "upgrade" is to a tiny Fiat 500 convertible, which we find double parked in the one way street outside the office. We're now wondering a bit what we might have got if we hadn't been upgraded. It's only got two doors. We can only just fit one of our suitcases in the very small boot, and it's a real squeeze to try to fit the rest of the luggage in the back seat. I try to drive off, but I can't work out how to start the engine or to put it into gear, and I can't see out the back window past our luggage. I seek clarification from hire car lady. She looks a bit worried; I'm not sure she's too confident that we’re capable of bringing her car back in one piece.

It seems like most of Milazzo must be using the street we're double parked in to get home for their siestas. The drivers here all appear to be mad, and it looks like it might be compulsory to talk on your phone here while you're herbing along at breakneck speed in heavy traffic. We manage to find our way onto a motorway, but we've got no idea what the speed limit is and there aren't any signs. We cruise along at 90 to 100 kilometres per hour, but there seem to be lots of speed fiends charging past us a lot faster than that.

We come to a toll booth. There's no one in it, there's a boom gate in front of us, and we've got no idea what to do. Meanwhile the cars are piling up behind us and angry drivers are honking their horns and waving their arms. Issy says that we should take advantage of the size of our tiny car and just drive around the barrier. I think this is a very bad idea, in fact I think it's probably right up there with the very worst ideas I've ever heard. She gets out and asks one of the angry honking drivers for help. I'm hoping they don't try to kill her, but no, she comes back quickly, triumphantly waving a ticket that she says was hanging out of a hole in the wall of the booth. The boom gate magically opens and off we go.

But it seems are troubles aren't yet over. We spot a man standing on the side of the road waving a red flag. It seems that he's trying to get everyone to slow down, and we soon come to a standstill. There's a sign saying that there's another tool booth a kilometre up ahead where we need to pay. There's also what looks to be a permanent sign saying to beware of traffic jams. We spend more than an hour inching our way forward. We assume there must be an accident, but no, it's just routine traffic backed up behind the toll booth. We wonder why anyone uses this road; the alternatives must be a sight for sore eyes.

I'm getting very sleepy, so we pull into a rest area. A few minutes later a police car pulls up next to us, and the window comes down. I'm sensing serious trouble. I'm not too sure about any of the road rules here, and I'm sure I must have broken at least some of them by now. At least I didn't take up Issy’s suggestion that we drive around the boom gate at the toll booth. I break into a cold sweat, and begin to wonder what a Sicilian jail might be like. But no, the officer asks me very politely if everything's alright. I nod vigorously, more in relief than anything else, and he drives off.

About half the motorway seems to be in tunnels, some of them up to two kilometres long. They've all got names, even the very short ones. It's all very cute.

We pass a car with a massive "P" sign on the back of it, handwritten on a sheet of cardboard that covers the entire back windscreen. We don't remember seeing any P or L plates anywhere else in Italy, so we're not sure quite what to make of this one. The driver's crawling along at glacial speed right on the very edge of the pavement. I suppose it’s possible there might be a sudden worldwide shortage of the cheap small plastic P plates …. the ones that make it possible to see out the back. I'm sure we must be missing something here....

We've booked an apartment in Ortigia, which is an historic island immediately offshore across a short bridge from the city of Siracusa. The instructions on how to get there, where to park, and how to contact the owner and the agent, are longer than the instructions for all the accommodation for the rest of the holiday put together. The first instruction is that we call the owner when we pass the city of Catania, which is about 50 kilometres north of Siracusa. Issy dials the number, says "OK" a lot and then hangs up. I ask her how the conversation went, and she responds that the owner doesn't speak much English. This hasn't done a lot to ease our nerves. The owner's son calls us back and we arrange to meet at the apartment in about an hour's time.

The Motorway ends. We only know this because there's a sign telling us that we can't go 130 kilometres per hour any more, we can only go 110. That might have been nice to know a couple of hours ago.

We take the turn off into Siracusa, and look for signs to Ortigia, but these seem to be noticeably absent. We drive around in circles for an hour following contradictory signs to the island, one of which is hand painted and looks like it's probably been put there deliberately to mislead idiot tourists, before finally finding our way onto the bridge.

We try to follow a map provided by the apartment owners to our designated car parking garage. This is proving a bit problematic mostly because none of the street names on it are legible. We soon find ourselves back on the bridge and heading back off the island again. Hmmm. This is not good. We turn on the GPS on the phone. It leads us down to the waterfront, and then tells us that the only way of getting to the car park from here is to walk. We're sure that a car park that you can't drive into must have some purpose in life, but it's not immediately obvious. We revert to the map, and soon find ourselves in the tiled forecourt of an ancient church. There are now lots of people yelling at us that we can't be here in a car, which isn't really news. I hope there aren't any CCTV cameras here. I suspect the penalties for driving through the courtyard of an ancient monument on an historic island might be quite severe, and if the authorities don’t get me, I’m sure there'd be any number of local "businessmen" who'd only be too happy to fit me with a pair of concrete shoes or apply some other form of customary local punishment.

We eventually manage to track down the garage and drive into it down a precipitously steep ramp. We were warned in advance that the attendant's notoriously rude, but if there's any abuse coming our way it's all in Italian so fortunately we're oblivious. We hand him the keys and he drives our chariot off out of sight into the back of the park. We're fairly sure that we've probably just voided the insurance.

We spy a man coming down the ramp park asking if I'm "Mr David". It's the apartment owner, Stefano, and his son. It's now three hours since we told him we'd be here in an hour, and he looks relieved to see us.

As we go to leave I realise that I've forgotten my wallet. We find the car in a back corner, but it's so close to the car next it on one side and the wall on the other side that we can't get to the door to open it. Car park attendant man's a lot bigger around the girth than me, which leaves us wondering how he managed to get it in there. .... but mystery quickly solved .... Stefano goes round the back and pushes it out with his hands. Hmmm.

We walk through the spectacular main square and past the Cathedral to the apartment, which is ideally located fronting the square on one side and the waterfront on the other. Stefano and his son are delightful people. We dine in an idyllic setting in the square, metres from the apartment.

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