Size Matters

Dear Blog, 

I am fascinated with how small they can make cars in Italy and how everyone is driving them. Almost no one in Siena drives a car too much bigger than your average smart-car. Each Fiat, Audi, Volkswagen and everything in-between seems to have been shrink rayed. I like that they favor practicality over showiness and spectacle. Of course it's not like they have a choice.

The streets in Siena are medieval, built for pedestrians and wheel barrows and not much else, averaging around 7-8 ft in width, which does not make it too comfortable for both people to walk and average sized cars to pass through. 

Even with the cars being so small, every taxi we take seems to always just barley miss a pedestrian or nearly scrape a corner during a turn. They say it gets to be like second nature after you have been driving these streets for around 2 weeks and "kiss a corner" a couple of times. I think I would get to first base with around 14 corners my first time driving here. Thank god it's a walking city.  

      One of the bigger cars I have seen parked along the street is this one. 

Parked on the grounds of Castello di Brolio of the Ricasoli family, the oldest family run winery in Italy, this Skoda Octavia VRS 1.8 TURBO sits at 177.4 inches or 14 feet long.