Spain Travel Answers

Whether you are charged extra for taking the car out of the country will depend on the individual hire company's policy, so you will have to check that out with them. When you are trying to calculate costs it is better to use official websites for bus and train than sites such as 'eurobus' (of which I have never heard) or 'eurorail' (which is just a ticketing agency). Agency websites do not always show all departures and usually charge admin fees on top of fares. To find the 'real' fares it's best to look at official sites. For long-distance buses throughout Europe look at www.eurolines.com For trains in Spain look at www.renfe.es For trains in France look at www.voyages-sncf.com Beware: if you choose the English language option you will be taken to Raileurope, a ticketing agency which does not show all departures and charges admin fees. So stick with the French language if you want to see fares and departures. Extras to consider when calculating costs are the cost of fuel (April prices: 1.65 euro per litre in France, 1.38 euro per litre in Spain), cost of parking and road tolls: http://www.autopistas.com/var/lang/en autoroutes.fr/en/payment-met...

www.autoeurope.com www.kemwel.com

It's not that you are charged extra for taking the car to another country, but it always costs more to LEAVE it in a different country from the one you hired it in. However, individual car-hire firms' charges obviously differ, so you need to research this by checking actual costs for the particular type of car you want - it is easy enough to google car hire companies Barajas! It can be more expensive to hire from certain airports, which may be because these offer extended opening hours for pick-up and drop-off compared with other locations. By Eurobus I presume you mean "international bus companies" - one of which is called Eurolines (I hope you don't think there is a single European bus operator) and by "Eurorail" I take it you mean "train", e.g. Spanish Railways (RENFE), French Railways (SNCF) (again, there is no single European train operator). Perhaps you are thinking of Eurail passes, which are sold (outside Europe) by ticketing agencies such as "Rail Europe". If using their prices, you should be aware that they only sell the most expensive tickets on the most expensive trains, and their assessment of the economic value of passes is skewed by that fact (I have come across people thinking of buying a175 rail pass to cover 2 train trips costing half that!). For NON-high-speed train tickets you should be looking on the website of the national train operator concerned, e.g. RENFE. The cost of travelling by car is of course not limited to the car hire fee plus parking. I wonder whether you are familiar with the price of gas in Europe: you can use www.viamichelin.com to tell you how much it will cost for an individual journey from A to B, both in fuel and e.g. road tolls. You will also have to explore whether the hotels you intend to stay at have parking facilities and if so, how much these cost. If you will be visiting small villages in the countryside a car is very useful, much less so if you are travelling between cities and want to stay in city centres.

I have rented a car twice in rural France. A car really allows you to get off the beaten path and explore small towns and rural areas. Don't try to take a car into a major city, like Paris, or London. Traffic is a nightmare and parking, if you can find it, will cost more then the rental car (trust me, I made that mistake once.) Taking the car across baorders, is a question for the rental company. Fuel is 2-3 times the cost in Europe as it is in the USA. The vdefault for rental cars in Europe is a manual transmissions. You will need to drop off the car at the same place you pick it up, or you will pay a premium for a one way rental, dropping off in another country may not be possible. Insurance can double the cost of a rental. Talk to your insurance company, your credit card companies. American Express offers a special collission damage waiver coverage for a flat fee per rental - look into it (I use it domestically, but have not used it internationally.) There are a lot of toll roads in Europe, parking is expensive and hard to find in cities. Just don't drive into the cities. You can rent a car at nearly any train station or airport. I have used Europocar and Hertz - good experiences with both. Garmin sells maps on an SD card. I used them in France last summer, they were a great help and the directions are all in English. Probably more then you wanted to know. For a trip into European cities, I would not rent a car, if you want to explore rural ares, a car can be a great help. Good Luck, David

Deciding on what mode of transport for your trip can be daunting. In May we rented a car for a week in Seville, Spain and took it into Portugal. After a lot of research and comparison of companies these are the things we found. 1) Renting a car from a downtown location as compared to the airport is substantially cheaper. I ran a one week rental from the Madrid Airport and the Atchoa Train Station with the same car and rental company. In this case the rental through Hertz was 275 a week at the airport vs213 downtown. We rented from the Seville train station and saved a lot. Even if you have to pay to get back to the airport from the train station, the cost is still less. 2) Extra insurance- Most Spanish rental car companies provide basic limited liability at no cost but do not cover the cost of collision or damage to your rental car. Purchasing a week of collision insurance can run to 100 or beyond. Check with your credit car company such American Express or Visa to see if they have additional collision insurance that can be bought for the whole trip at a lower cost. For example, we were covered by AMEX for the whole trip for 18 US. 3) Inspect then photograph the car before leaving the rental company- Some rental car companies try to charge you for scratches and dents that you didn't make. In order to protect against this be sure to inspect the car with the rental car representative and take pictures of the car with a date stamp before you leave the grounds. Gas in Spain is expensive. When we there the lowest price petrol was1.44 a liter (euros). In Portugal it was 1.72.

You don't say where in France you want to go, but if you are going someplace with a train station, I'd take the train to France and rent a car from the train station. If you just want to visit a city, don't bother with the car since cars are an expensive nuisance in cities. If you plan Madrid to Paris, for instance, there is no need for a car. If you want to get out and explore the countryside, a car is useful. You could rent a car in Spain to explore there, turn it in, train to France and rent another car there. If you haven't already bought plane tickets, you could fly into Madrid and out of Toulouse or Paris (or Nice). In late October, I'd be tempted to start in France and head south into Spain just because the weather can be a problem in France in late October / early November. We actually ran into freezing weather in southern France in the second week of November once. Of course it can be quite lovely too, but I'd go with the odds. Did you have a particular destination in mind for France? That might help us make suggestions. We nearly always get a car and we don't spend much time in cities. It depends on what you want to see. Usually we fly into a city, enjoy it for a few days, then lease a car and drive out into the countryside for the remainder of the trip. It gives us a taste of both city and country. Fun. http://www.viamichelin.com/ http://maps.google.com/ http://www.autoeurope.com/ http://www.kemwel.com/ http://www.sixt.com/ If you plan to rent a car, make the arrangements from home before you leave to get the best deals. You will also need to book ahead if you want an automatic transmission. They don't have them at all rental sites so you must book ahead to be sure of getting one. If you would use the car for 21 days, you could also consider a lease. That's what we do and it is easier than renting. You get a brand new car of your choice, pay for it before you leave home, have 24-hour roadside assistance and the folks you deal with are wonderful. We've been doing it for years and highly recommend it. We use Peugeot but have friend who have used Renault and also like that. Citroen has recently started a lease program with the added advantage that they only require a 17-day lease. It's a thought. Here's the web site we use. http://www.autofrance.net/ Good luck.