In my recent trip to Italy, I’ve noticed that municipalities of small towns have been adopting a new way to collect parking fees. Instead of using traditional parking meters, drivers can purchase pre-paid parking permits sold in coffee shops and newsstands. How does it work? Just scratch the date and time of arrival, put the permit on your dashboard and come back in time before the Vigili Urbani give you a ticket. The average parking fee is around $0.60 per hour.

If you are planning to rent a car in Italy, you may wish to know how much gas costs these days. One gallon of normal gas (not premium) costs around $6.70. In our recent trip, we opted for a diesel rental car, which got quite a good mileage and for the same gallon of fuel we paid ‘just’ $5.78 … sigh…