Driving in Europe

[Orionjoel]

Hi All,

As part of a visit to Europe I am going to be making soon, I am considering renting a car. Possibly between Nice and Paris I am thinking. However may take a route through Italy and Switzerland.

What are the potential challenges or issues that I may have in this drive?

I am from Australia and have previously driven in the US and England, so chaning side of the road and Miles to Kilometers doesnt concern me, just more thinking about potential language issues.

Thanks
Joel

[briggl]

For our trip to Italy in 2007, I rented a car with a GPS.
This was probably the best decision I made about that trip. Without the GPS we probably would have been able to find our way around, but it would have been much more difficult and stressful.
Now I have my own GPS with both North American and European maps so next time I won't have to pay extra to get it from the auto rental company.

If you drive on a toll road in Italy, they have lanes at the tolls where you can pay the toll with a credit card if you don't have the cash. Just look for the blue Viacard signs. I don't know about the rest of Europe.
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[zydeco joe]

Had two long trips in Europe last year, 4 weeks in France in May/June followed by 5 weeks in France Germany and Austria Both of the trips went well with no real problems and we just used maps, old maps at that.
The problem I see with your trip is Switzerland as they love to rip you off with road tolls, the only pass you can get is for 12 months and thats the reason we missed them out and went to Austrial for our alpine mountain section.
France has tolls on motorways but you pay per section driven, Austria we had a 10 day pass and Germany no tolls, well we did not have to pay on any German roads.
If you can drive in England you can drive any place LOL
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"Laisser les bon temps rouler !!"( let the good times roll ).

[AgnesRiley]

If you rent a car, make sure you're allowed to drive it outside the country where you rented it (that varies from supplier to supplier). Also, some companies will let you hand in your car in a different pick up location (so you could, say, hire a car hire in France and drop it off in Italy). That can be somewhat expensive though, so be sure to check what the charges on that would be so you don't get any surprises.

[travelingeuropean]

not sure what you mean by language issues. just be careful which roads have tolls. thats it, i suppose