2239 Driving to Sicily at Easter

Andrew
We sometimes drive down to northern Calabria from London. It is really a two-day journey (about 23 hours driving), though we like to allow two overnights so we can enjoy Bologna on the way down.
I guess our place is about four hours north of Reggio Calabria, so I think you'd be well to allow three days driving (i.e. two overnights) to get to Sicily.
For accomodation, we often run some internet checks on likely stopping towns before leaving. But we normally end up driving into a town at dusk and just looking for a comfortable hotel. I'm afraid I don't know about catering for dogs, but I guess some of the hotel websites should help there.
Enjoy your trip... it probably looks more of a challenge now than it will prove to be. It is a pleasant journey.
rgds
Eddie B

Andrew,

I think three days would do it, but I should warn you that the last stretch would be tiring as the road south from napoli to the Straits is still under construction at a few places so there are frequent traffic jams, especially at Easter. It takes me 9 hours to get from Rome to the Straits. A much calmer way, but a bit more expensive, is to take a ferry from Napoli to palermo. They leave every evening and get into Palermo at 6:30 the following morning. In this way you arrive in Sicily nice and fresh (and the approack to Palermo harbour at dawn is spectacular).

Ronan

Thanks for the advice so far. We drove our MG roadster down to Sicily from Rome (after motorailing from Calais) about 14 years ago and had a lot of fun. That occasion we took the 'to and fro' overnights in Amalfi which we thought was beautiful. The motorway countdown signs did seem to take a long time to get down to single figures but we got there and back in one piece.

We are considering agrotourism accomodation as they may prove to be more dog friendly places to stay.

Any one else had the travel experience with dogs? (hopefully they will be less problematic than children sat in the back of the car!)

We used to drive every summer to Rome with our collie -going through the tunnel we did it with one overnight stop just before the Gottard Tunnel in Switzerland. Not cheap but very dog friendly - he was epileptic and wee'ed in the room but they still welcomed us back the year after and the year after that. Not cheap but walking the dog by the lake was wonderfully relaxing after the first day's drive. We had three kids aswell so needed to stop every 2 - 3 hours rather than trying a hard drive. Once in Italy we made straight for home just south of Rome as we found it impossible to find accommodation which would accept a dog. Maybe other forum contributees have better experience - taking the dog back with his pet passport was great fun too - we did the legal bit in Italy rather than wasting time in France - post again if you need any tips on that;)

Fiona thanks for this post I wouldn't mind having the details if you can remember the hotel. Pehaps you could e mail if you get time and I will check out for availability.

Cheers,

Hi Andrew,
I have done the London (well actually Northern Ireland, but I doubt that you will be coming from there!) to Catanzaro in Calabria a couple of times in the last year and am just fresh back from Catanzaro to Florence (10hours allowing stopping for a panino) over Christmas and reckon that anything you can do to avoid the last part (such as the suggestion to take a boat from Napoli) is to be jumped on. There are still alot of road works which means that you are down to single carriageway and if there is an accident or you get behind a slow lorry or motorhome you can easily pass 3 or 4 hours at 40kmph. The France bit is plain sailing and i think that for the dogs some of the Gite type B&B's could be the answer (we stayed in a wonderful one which was a farm in Brittany) and I am sure you can find out more about them on the internet. As someone else has pointed out an agriturismo will be your best bet in Italy - I think that 3 days is going some, especially with dogs. I would say 4 so that you can at least enjoy some of it rather than doing 10 hour stints in the car. But if you are going to do it, remind me to send you the name and location of the best service station (it has slipped my mind at the moment!), where the mozzarella and panini are really something else!
Lisa

andrew - like Lisa I think 3 days to Calabria is going some with the dogs and you would probably enjoy the journey more with more breaks - after all there is some spectacular scenery and beautiful towns and villages en route. The hotel we used (and now miss since Max is no longer with us) was [url]www.rigiblickamsee.ch[/url] - if you find agriturismos which are happy to take dogs do post again as we may need the information another time if we want to explore more in Italy with a dog

Fiona this looks lovely. We will definately be considering this as a stop at Easter.Take your point about the schedule. I would love to spend a lot more time but restricted by the holiday allowances. Perhaps I can feel a 'sickie' coming on!!

Thanks for the link.

You're a brave man!

It took us 3 days to Southern Marche with two dogs who refused to drink or eat for the whole journey, so I would allow 4 days and make sure the aircon is good. We stopped in France and Ivrea (nearish to Turin).

We booked all our accommodation from Alistair Sawday's great website as he actually lists wether the dogs are allowed in the room or not. This might sound nuts but it's really important as most places when they say they accept dogs ony accept little euro-lapdogs(!) and we have two setters.
I would avoid Switzerland as they have border controls and will want to see your dog papaerwork again whereas you can drive straight through the rest of the european countries (except from the UK to France obviously).

We too did eurotunnel and it was excellent and there was no trouble for the dogs. Most ferry companies make you leave the dogs in the car while you are on deck and our two would have been terrified at all the strange noises.

Hello there
I dont know if you would consider the overnight ferry from Genoa to Palermo to cut down on an awful lot of driving.It takes around 18 hours but I am not sure what provision they make for pets.You could always drive down and get the ferry back, as we drove back from Sicily one year and it is a very long drive unless you stop for several nights on the way home.I am very glad we didnt drive both ways as we still covered around 3000 miles on our trip.

Penny mentioned the paperwork for Switzerland for dogs - we always made sure we had it but over 4 consequetive summers were never asked for it. Big tip if you plan to bring the dogs back some time, get the form from Defra which the Italian vet is supposed to fill in.before you leave the UK. Defra will say that the vets Italyknow what to do, in our experience the vets thought the whole thing a farce so we took the forms with us, filled them in ourselves and just got the vet to sign. The only time we were ever asked for paperwork was at Eurotunnel in Calais as we were about to return through the shuttle - sometimes we went via France, sometimes Germany and always Switzerland and on into Italy.