Barcelona to Southern France by Car or Train?

Hi,
Are the flights booked? Could you fly into Barcelona and out of Nice on your transatlantic booking? That would cut some travel time. Indeed there is no good way to turn a trip from Barcelona to Nice and back into a loop, there's basically one highway / train route.
Regardless, I'd suggest you
- pinpoint the places you want to visit. Do your 14-18 days include Barcelona?
- take a train to the first French town of interest (e.g. Perpignan if you want to see Collioure, or Carcassonne, or Montpellier... You get the drill) and rent a car there, because renting in Spain and dropping off in France is expensive
- if the ticket booking suggestion above doesn't work, fly Nice to Barcelona the day before your transatlantic flight, and ideally not on the last flight of the day - you don't want a delay/cancellation to mess with your expensive long haul flight. The train takes way too long, 7-8 hours.

If you decide to rent a car, please note that usually one pays a hefty fee to drop off a car in a different country than that in which you rented it. This may influence your thinking.

We are basically doing the same thing. We are going by train from Barcelona to Nîmes. It’s a 3.5 hour ride. From there we are picking up our rental car. And then we drop our rental car back in the same city and head back by train to Barcelona. Where we fly home. That way you don’t have to pay huge drop off fees

Thanks to everyone for suggestions!

Our flights are not booked. Neither are our accommodations!

-Are we too late (for a July trip) to find clean and safe accommodations costing less than 200 euro per night for all four of us? We are not interested in hostels, but open to airbnb or house/apartment rentals and hotels.

There is no way to know unless you start doing the research: accommodations & transport. Make notes of what you find. Compare hotels vs apartments; car vs train. Then you will start to see things that make sense to what your family wants to do. Don't be afraid to make phone calls to potential accommodations; they often can help you find beyond what you find online.

The part of the drive heading east through Spain to the French border isn't that nice from the highway. I would suggest taking a train from Barcelona to Perpignan, France and renting a car there. That way you'll avoid the fees for renting a car in Spain and dropping it off in France. The drive across southern France is amazing and beautiful. Be prepared for the toll roads - it's enough that you should probably budget for it. You can also take side roads to avoid tolls if you want to meander and take your time. Good stops along the way are Collioure, Beziers, Narbone, Agde, Pezenas, Sete, and Montpellier. The Canal du Midi winds throughout that route. There are so many beautiful towns and villages along the way and there are lots of good wineries too. My favorite is Abbaye de Valmagne outside of Pezenas. It's very unique - in an old monastery. The giant wine casks fill the side chapels of the ancient church. It's really something. Most of the towns in this area have pedestrianized zones in their centers but if you stay just outside of these zones you can find places to stay with car parking available.
You should fly back to Barcelona OR just fly home from Nice, open jaw.

Some technical explanation:
What is being suggested is a multi-destination air ticket. Fly into one city, fly home from another.
If you are crossing the Atlantic, this efficient approach will produce a fare that is about the same as in-and-out of one city. You save lots of time, and the cost of going back to your arrival point. But it must be arranged using a multi-city search function; these itineraries are not a set of one-way tickets.
Flying back from Nice probably will require changing planes, but it is worth it.

Without knowing the options, I would prefer to fly into Nice first, since the trip could be more complicated and with fewer options. But that's just a guess; it's hard to judge without knowing your city of departure.

As noted, the one way rental fees are pretty high.

That being said, I quite enjoyed the route through Andorra (CG-2). Great hiking and great vistas and a great road. A great way to get from BCN to Carcasonne. We traveled the entire region during location searches prior to buying our place in Nice. We took the Perthus route back to BCN.

I would say, however, Nice and much of the CdA are easier and often quick to travel using public transit in the summer than driving. Especially in July.

rtu,

For a relatively short trip, I'd suggest using high speed trains as much as possible as that will be a more efficient use of your short holiday time. Use car rentals for getting to places not well served by public transit.

As I recall, you'll required an International Driver's Permit for driving in Spain, and that's highly recommended for driving in France. There was a post on the forum last year from someone who was stopped in a routine check in Spain, and fined on the spot for not being able to present an IDP. If I remember correctly, the person didn't have enough cash with them, so the officer accompanied them to an ATM to get the money for the fine.