Car rental help! Driving from Ypres, Belgium to Normandy France

In general, it is best to drop a car in the same country you rented in. If it has a foreign license plate (Belgium), it cannot be re-rented in France, but must be transported back to Belgium and you pay for that. Since Ypres is just a hop and a skip from Lille, France, rent it there, then drive it to Normandy. You can get a train from Ypres to Kortrijk, then to Lille every hour.

Thanks Sam. I hadn't realized that changing countries would cause problems. Lille is an excellent idea. We were thinking of saving a bit of money and driving to Paris instead of dropping off the car at Caen. We would be traveling on a Sunday and Caen is closed on Sundays. I feel a little uncomfortable just dropping off the car without a person there to verify the condition of the car. In Paris there are sites that are open on a Sunday. Do you have any advice regarding driving into Paris? The Gare Nord station is open on Sunday. Otherwise we could drop it off at CDG but that seems like a long way out, especially since it takes 40 min - hour to get back into Paris to our accomodation. Or is driving in Paris more of a headache than it is worth?

We were faced with the same problem as you. We're also touring the Normandy area and was making our way back to Paris on a Sunday from Mont St Michel. We decided to go ahead and drive to Paris and someone on this excellent forum suggested Orly airport as the drop off point. The office there is open till midnight and a cab ride into Paris is about €25. We rented via Auto Europe. At first, we were going to refuse the Collision Damage Waiver and just use our credit card for it. After some thought and a little more research on peope's experiences, we decided to go ahead and pay the extra money and buy it from the rental company. If you use your CC and a collision occurs, you have to pay for the cost upfront and get reimbursed by your insurance company which sounds like a big hassle. Get a quote online on Auto Europe and it will clearly show you the cost differences. We're travelling in April-May of this year. By the way, i got a quote for the drop off fee if we rented a car in Amsterdam and dropped it off in Paris-$600! We're going to take the train from Amsterdam to Lille and pick up the rental car there.

Hi,

Not exactly what you asked but if you need it: the nearest car rental near Vimy, the location of the Canadian Memorial, is Arras to the left of the train station as you exit the station. As you get closer to Ypres coming from Arras, the landscape is dotted with British war cemeteries. The city hall in Arras has a tourist office on the ground floor which not has brochures featuring WW1 sites/memorials but can arrange tours on the war areas, such as the nearby British cemeteries, also one large one in Arras itself (one hour from the train station on foot), the French cemetery and the largest German one in northern France. The British and the German one I've seen more than once. Your tour covers from the Somme River to Vimy? A lot of ground to cover. Does it include the towns of Albert and Perrone? The war museum is located in Perrone.

Do you know which company you will be renting from? We rented with Europcar (via AutoEurope) and we picked up our car on a Sun morning on Ave Foch, which is on the 'other' side of the Arc de Triomphe (didn't have to attempt that craziness) and was pretty much a straight shot to the Perpherique/ring road. (Well, it would have been if we hadn't messed up the GPS and ended up over near the Eiffel Tower - we actually were going to correct way - and easily got to the ring road, but somehow set the GPS - which was integrated in the car...and speaking German until we got it switched to English - to take us to the last destination, which was somewhere in Paris...fun times!) And it was only a few minutes walk to the Metro stop at the Arc.

Driving was pretty good - our second time, we had a midsize (needed an automatic - Citroen Cactus) and unfortunately, put a huge scrape down the side taking a tight corner in a parking garage (so odds are, if/when we rent again, we'll only do outdoor parking lots). We used our Amex to rent, which offers coverage. I won't go into the whole story, but if you are going to use Amex, use the card of the principal driver - in our case, I always booked everything, but hubby was doing the driving. I should have used his card and thought our claim wouldn't go thru - but the kind lady at Amex forgave my stupidly (thank goodness - it was a $550 bill). Next time, I'll purchase the insurance Amex offers - I believe it's 'no questions asked' (to a certain extent) and the cost is pretty low compared to what the rental places charge. I haven't looked into it a whole lot, but will next time we rent.