robbiemarche's activity

I met somebody once who knew about cities beginning with the letter B near Mt Etna.  Would that be at least a start?

Hertz and Avis best in my experienceWe always use Hertz or Avis from either Pisa or Perugia.If you want to get the cheapest prices sometimes it's less expensive at  www.hertz4ryanair.com  (you don't need to have flown out by ryanair) but sometimes it's 50% more expensive!   Worth checking this as well as hertz.com however.

I contacted my bank, Monte dei Paschi di Siena, and the manager confirmed that, becuse we had a non-resident bank account, the withholding tax charge would not apply. So please check the categorisation of the bank account to which the funds are paid.

I've used the Michel Thomas courses which are very helpful and useful for drilling down to certain sentence constructions. He's very good.But I'd recommend you simply take these out from your local library rathe than paying £60 to 80 for the CDs. Listen to them in the car (there is no homework) over 2-3 weeks and then try something different.I think a combination of language CDs, classes, watching films and using a student textbook is best rather than relying just on one set of audio CDs.

If you simply do a google search for 'Valori Agricoli Medi della provincia' and then add 'di' and the name of your province, that seems to work.Very interesting - just done that for Siena and it's quite revealing.   Not good however if the land you are buying is classified as being within a clasified DOC wine growing area!

Thanks Sebastiano - that's incredibly helpful.  I fully understand it's not a profitable venture - rather more an emotional one of seeing the vines and yielding some (hopefully drinkable) wine!

Transit van to TuscanyI'd recommend Duncan Watts.  He has a long wheel-base transit van and is very helpful.  duncanwatts@tiscali.com  07925346046He lives in the Abruzzo but comes over every month.

Grass cutting - TuscanyWe paid 45e per hour to the local digger man here in Tuscany who came last September when the grass was high. He had a tractor and cleared and removed all the grass cuttings.  Area was about 3 hectares of rough grassy fields = 30,000 m2 and he did this in 10 hours.it's important to keep the grass down in case of fire.

The search function for the content within the Community seems to have disappeared.... There is a search bar but only for 'topic' or 'location.

You need properly to compare costs with renting. A week's rental of a new Fiat Panda from Hertz is betwen 220 and 300 euros depending on time of year.  So for 8 weeks the total costs would be about 2,000 euros. To this, rather than paying for additonal protection for collision damage waiver, you could take out one annual policy which costs about £40 (at least from the UK - see eg: https://www.questor-insurance.co.uk/buy-insurance/hire-car-hire-excess.aspx). You are then fully covered - effectively on a comprehensive basis rather thanthird party only. You have then have to compare this with the costs of:

• purchase price of car
• bollo/tax
• insurance
• breakdown insurance
• road tax
• getting to and from the airport (unless you want to pay a year's worth of airport parking charges)
• service and repairs
• new tyres
• depreciation

and also of course the administrative and mental commitment of dealing with your own car in Italy from abroad. I did read that most car hire companies receive their cars free from the manufacturer which is why they can offer such good rates. If you do rent, I would strongly recommend one of the majors eg Hertz, Avis or Europcar - don't use vouchers and don't use Goldcar since you can be stung very hard indeed for tiny blemishes on return.  There are a number of threads on this in this Community. Note If you need a big car then costs do change dramatically - renting a people carrier can be twice as much as a small car but buying costs may not be all that much different if you buy an old car. Good luck!