Messina Car Rental

Looking for car rental place near the port in Messina Italy?? Will be on the Carnival Freedom May 25th Sailing. Heard that driving is not to difficult in Messina and it being a small island easy to do on own. Please let me know your feeling on this.:o

Argus is a rental consolidator, as opposed to an actual rental company that operates an office across the street from the pier.

http://www.argusrentals.com

Driving in Messina has been discussed a number of times so run a search on Taromina for more posts.

Messina itself is a working city, so if you have any city driving skills you should be OK. I would say the main issue is 80% of the rentals have stick and you pay a hefty premium for automatic transmission. I mention this because the drive from the pier to the Autostrada (superhighway) is up a grade, so you may be stopped in traffic, uphill... so be comfortable driving a clutch on a grade. Other than that, the Autostrada is a fast track where you also need to be alert for slow moving vehicles. It is a beautiful 45 min drive to Taromina with something like 32 tunnels that you pass through. You have the sea on one side and Mt Etna in front of you. Very scenic.

don't forget to factor in the high cost of gas - it was almost $7 a gallon when i was there in november :eek:

personally i would never rent a car in a foreign port. too much can go wrong.

Zaadam,

Normally I wouldn't either, but of all the ports we went to, Messina to Taromina was possably the most straight forward and foreign driver friendly. With a little bit of homework, this one can be done by "urban comfortable" drivers.

Gas costs what gas costs, I upgraded the insurance and we split the bill between 2 couples. Paid about half the rate of the comparable ships tour.

We also left plenty of time to get back to the ship and ended up with 90 minutes to spare, so we stopped to chat with the local fisherman who were oogling our wives.

i rented from national .right across the street from where the ships dock.i bought all the insurances i could ,total cost for the day wass around a $100 we went to mt etna and taormina great way to get around .i left myself time to get back to the ship and got backk alot quicker than i thought driving was not that difficult if youre ised to a big city

Looking for car rental place near the port in Messina Italy?? Will be on the Carnival Freedom May 25th Sailing. Heard that driving is not to difficult in Messina and it being a small island easy to do on own. Please let me know your feeling on this.:o

Small island? It's the largest island in the Mediterrenean Sea, with an area of 25.700 square km. :eek:

Be aware, driving in Italy is totally different than in the US. I honestly don't recommend a rental car if you visit Messina for 1 day. I drove the whole island during a landvacation in a couple of days, and I'm very used to drive in the stressful European traffic. But it can be dangerous for tourists. There are criminals who dress and act like policemen. They signal you to stop, then they robb you. Italy is just like Holland, France or Germany very stressful. It's different than a touristic island like Mykonos or Santorini.

Don't get me wrong, it's definitely worth renting a car and things should be ok, but I really don't recommend you to do this for just 1 day. Book a nice tour, relax and enjoy a wonderful day.