Timeline for Is it feasible to rent a car for a multi-country Europe trip?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
10 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Mar 31, 2019 at 4:22 | vote | accept | Tim Malone | ||
| Mar 18, 2019 at 14:23 | comment | added | CMaster | Having driven around Paris, I strongly contest any notion that driving to a well-located Paris hotel is "the easiest thing". | |
| Mar 18, 2019 at 11:57 | comment | added | Fattie | ... the overwhelmingly easiest, best, cheapest, way to do that is just simply arrive in Paris by car, park at the hotel, enjoy Paris for a couple nights, and then get in the car and drive off - happy! It is enormously more convenient and better in every way than the hours and hours monkeying around with trains, planes, taxis etc. This is exactly and obviously why people just get a car to tour around Europe. I think you're picturing an American on a four week holiday, spending 14 nites in Paris, 14 nites in Rome, and maybe seeing Versailles. | |
| Mar 18, 2019 at 11:50 | comment | added | Fattie | You're picturing a "city break". You're now equating the notion that it's easier (if more expensive) to hop in a taxi to go to a restaurant a few blocks away than to take the car out of the hotel. The tenor of the OP's question is touring Europe. Of course, naturally, if you stop in Paris (ugh) for a couple nights you would use foot to go from Hotel Bel Ami to Cafe Napoleon! But the notion that Paris is "extremely inhospitable" to cars is nonsensical. Let's say you've just seen Amsterdam and you now wander down to Paris and stay in a Paris central hotel for a couple nights... | |
| Mar 18, 2019 at 6:32 | comment | added | Zach Lipton | @Fattie Absolutely, get a car and see what you want to see. But it's illogical for a tourist in Paris to wake up, decide they want to visit Notre-Dame, the Louvre, and the Eiffel Tower, and proceed to drive their rental car between those places, finding parking at each one. | |
| Mar 18, 2019 at 1:42 | comment | added | Fattie | @ZachLipton, you might as well say "When in Paris, there's no need to bother with all that French food stuff. You can stick to McDonalds for 9 out of 10 meals, and only occasionally you'll be troubled to have to eat at a 'restaurant' or 'cafe'." The fundamental joy of being in Europe is driving around. France exists to be seen by car; possibly the single greatest pleasure in life is driving around Italy; et cetera. The OP is going to see the countries, ie drive in them. Your talk of "segments of the trip" is bizarre - as in my "McDonalds" analogy. The raison d'etre is driving, | |
| Mar 17, 2019 at 21:43 | comment | added | Zach Lipton | In other words, I'd focus on strategically renting a car for the segments of the trip where a rental car is the best means of transportation for your destination. | |
| Mar 17, 2019 at 21:38 | comment | added | Zach Lipton | Despite what @Fattie says, many of the countries on this route are served by very comprehensive rail networks and feature major cities that are fairly to extremely inhospitable to cars, including expensive parking in the city center. It, of course, depends on the kind of trip you want to take and where you plan to go (this is all less true if you're only visiting country areas), but cities like, say, Amsterdam are not configured to be explored from a rental car. You'd be paying for the rental, paying for parking, and paying for public transit between the parking and the city center. | |
| Mar 17, 2019 at 2:42 | history | edited | Hilmar | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Mar 17, 2019 at 2:37 | history | answered | Hilmar | CC BY-SA 4.0 |