After our visit to Greece, we flew from Athens to Rome to spend the next 2 ½ weeks exploring Italy. Friends from the area had suggested we take the train from place to place but we opted to rent another car so we didn’t have to depend on schedules (even though they are excellent) and could have the freedom to explore some of the back roads and smaller communities when we wanted. We do not recommend taking a car into the downtown areas of the larger cities (eg. Rome, Florence) unless you like driving through a maze of one way narrow streets crowded with people.