Travel Desk Tuesday: Taxi prices in Tuscany and the EU entry-exit system
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 26 May 2026
⏱️ 6 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Senior travel writer Natalie Wilson has just returned from her first trip to Tuscany and Umbria. She tells of being quoted €1,000 for a cab ride in Italy, and reports on her experiences of the EU entry-exit system.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder. |
| 0:07.2 | It's Tuesday the 26th of May. |
| 0:11.1 | Travel Desk Tuesday and I'm delighted to welcome back senior travel writer Natalie Wilson, |
| 0:18.1 | who's recently, you have been not just to Tuscany for the first time, |
| 0:22.7 | but you have also encountered for the first time a quote of €1,000 for a taxi. |
| 0:29.4 | I've got to start there. What happened? |
| 0:32.2 | Well, so yes, of course, I was in Tuscany for the first time. |
| 0:35.3 | I was about an hour north of Florence, |
| 0:37.7 | it was a nature reserve called the Oasis Dynamo. Had a beautiful stay and I thought, while I'm in |
| 0:43.4 | Italy, great to see more of the country. About two hours south in Panicale, which is in Umbria. |
| 0:51.5 | And I thought, maybe naively that a two-hour trip wouldn't cost me the earth, but |
| 0:56.5 | being quoted a thousand euro for a taxi was painful. And I thought I absolutely cannot be doing that. |
| 1:03.6 | But I was a bit, I know, as you would recommend, a bit too rural to hitchhike. Unfortunately, |
| 1:08.5 | so I had my first Trinitalia trip. So I did pay about 50 euros for a taxi |
| 1:15.0 | down to Florence. And then I fought my way through Florence train station. This is Santa Maria |
| 1:22.1 | Novella and it is fairly chaotic, although a train Italia app, I find, is just marvellous. |
| 1:29.0 | Perfect. |
| 1:29.7 | And for a regional train, 15 euro to travel, I think it was an hour and 45 minutes on the train. |
| 1:35.7 | And it was ideal. |
| 1:37.0 | The journey was beautiful. |
| 1:38.7 | And it made me so confused on why our trains are so expensive. |
| 1:43.1 | Well, that's, I think, a different topic. But take me |
... |
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