In June we will be driving up to Paris from Lyon to return our rental car and stay for a few days. Is it worth it to navigate the city to return the car and get to our hotel? Or, would a better choice be to find a return location just outside of Paris and metro into the city?
If this is the case...where would you recommend we return the car?
We will be renting from autoeurope.
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You may want to consider leaving the car in Lyon and taking the train to Paris, particularly if you do not plan on spending time en route. Train tickets if purchased sufficiently far in advance (90 days before departure) will cost less than the price of fuel and tolls for the return to Paris. You%26#39;ll save a day or two of rental costs.
I personally should have no problem dropping off luggage and passengers at the hotel and then dropping of the car at the nearest rental office. However by simply asking this question, one assumes for you it might be better to leave the car at Orly Airport (along the route from Lyon) and take public transportation into Paris.
Note: Autoeurope is a good choice in brokers but they have no offices in France. More accurately you will rent a car through them, not from them meaning that if you do want to find a rental office near your hotel at which to leave the car, you%26#39;ll be looking for a Europcar, Sixt, or Avis office.
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If you are renting from AutoEurope, you state where you want to pick up (city or airport) and drop off. If you pick central Paris, the actual return may be no where near where you are staying.
I agree with the idea to either turn the car in in Lyon--if you aren%26#39;t doing any special stops from Lyon to Paris or at the airport. Limited rental offices are open on Sunday when traffic is at a lower level. Are you getting a GPS or have one? Driving through Paris and trying to read street signs and obey the one way streets may not be the way to start your stay in Paris.
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On our recent trip we were to return the car at Gare du Nord. When we got there, there was absolutely no indication of where to return the car. We drove round the block a few times, through areas supposedly for taxis, and in desperation went into the car park so we could park and make a phone call to the car rental company. Lo and Behold...once INSIDE the car park there were signs directing us to level 6 where we left the car.
So make sure you know exactly where to return the car, not just the place but the access. We were getting pretty annoyed by the time we discovered the place. I have to say that we also found the drive into Paris a bit stressful, with multiple lanes and roads coming down to virtually one lane near to the peripherique, lots of cars and vans parked on the right pulling out into the traffic and so on. Leaving the car at a site just outside the city and training it in seems like a good idea.
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Some of the rental companies have depots at the Peripherique. If you can use one of these, you would not have to drive into the centre of Paris, and could get a taxi or use the Metro to get to your hotel.
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I shared LynnB%26#39;s experience but in August. We drove to Paris from Tours and had a very frustrating time even making it into the city (once there I had plenty of good maps) and I consider myself a good navigator. Next time, a GPS! Or at least a better map of the environs outside of Paris.
And trying to find the Avis office at the Austerlitz train station was very difficult. It kind of set a tone that could have negatively impacted our stay had we not made a conscious effort to erase it from our memories!
I%26#39;m not normally one to shy away from a challenge, but if I had to do it over again I would want a GPS or to drop the car off somewhere else and take the train in. There didn%26#39;t seem to be any difference in the rental price for us, although you%26#39;d have to add the train fare in.
Connie
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And we had a similar experience in 2006 when we returned our Europecar rental at the Montparnasse station. We couldn%26#39;t find any signs, and it was very annoying and frustrating.
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Recently we found it extremely challenging to find the place to return a hire car in Orly Airport!!! In retrospect we would have returned the car in Tours (we were staying in that region) and caught a train to Paris. Being Australians it was also especially hard, as we drive on the %26quot;other%26quot; side of the road, but it was the lack of signs. We hada GPS but that didn%26#39;t really help!!!
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%26lt;%26lt;%26lt;we found it extremely challenging to find the place to return a hire car in Orly Airport%26gt;%26gt;%26gt;
I can certainly understand the difficulties of returning a rental car in Paris particularly at locations which are not clearly marked as others have pointed out.
However both CDG and ORY have rental return locations which are clearly indicated by large yellow signs in English. Furthermore, much of the airport roads are divided or even one way making it difficult to maintain a sense of driving %26quot;on the other side%26quot;.
Certainly it can%26#39;t be that difficult.
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Shoesy!
I had to laugh... I had the same experience at Montparnasse
this summer! I finally pulled into a gas station and the
cashier pointed to a very small sign across and just up
the street! My GPS was of no use because I didn%26#39;t have
an exact address to plug into it.
I blame myself though as I could have asked specifically
for directions or an address when I picked up the car in Nice. But I figured, how hard can it be to find the parking at Montparnasse? Harder than I%26#39;d thought as it turned out! LOL
The Europcar office was closed when we descended into the bowels of the parking garage... my daughter and I joined
a couple hunting around in the dim light for a slot or box in which to deposit the keys... the chap finally spied what was a large safe halfway behind a pillar... there was a slot in the top which had been crudely melted through with a welding torch! So at least the key drop was safe! LOL
For me the bottom line was there was no problem at all driving and navigating in Paris but next time I will have an
exact address of where to drop a rental.
Rob
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I returned at Gare du Nord as well a while ago. I was able to find the garage quite easily. However, I did trespass into a taxi-only zone and a policeman on a bike told me to get out. I was happy he wasn%26#39;t going to ticket me because I would have been mad that on the last minute of my two week driving trip, I was going to pick up a ticket!
Anyway, I liked sydneynick%26#39;s suggestion of finding a rental return along Peripherique. You get to avoid most of the traffic heading into Paris. When I drove into the city even on a Sunday morning, once I got to Peripherique, it took me at least an hour to get through the traffic.
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