car rental vs. train

You are the only person who can determine which you would prefer.

Questions...do you believe you would be comfortable driving in France? Many of the roads are quite narrow but those are often the most scenic. Do you believe you could follow the road rules? You can drive the circle of the roundabouts more than once. Trust me...my husband and I have done that many times?

How much time do you want to spend in each area? Do you know the train schedules for the places you want to visit on the day trips? Would using a car make it easier or do the train schedules work to allow you to see what you want? How much time do you want to spend in a car versus being on a train?

Are you willing to pay the tolls if you drive on the main roads? Do you plan to go from Lyon to Provence and then to Strasbourg and Annecy? Have you looked at the mileage for each?

We have spent a lot of time in Provence. Provence is a large area. What part of Provence do you want to visit? For example, if you want to be in the Luberon, a car would be best to allow you to more towns. The trains run to the larger cities such as Avignon but to go to the Luberon hill towns, you would want a car. I do not know anything about possible buses.

Many posters on this website swear by trains. My husband and I have used trains twice but most of the time, we have rented cars. We like to go to the off beat, back roads places. As I said, you have to decide what you want to do, what you want to see and if you are willing to do the driving. France is a country about the size of Texas so you could be doing a lot of driving.

Regardless, have lots of fun! I always envy those of you who are getting to go to France in the very near future!

Bev

I will make a few of suggestions.
1. Rent a car for a day trip to Provence, since it seems a little fuzzy where you want to go and you can keep options open. Looks like train tickets will run at least 130 euro for a day trip.
2. Book now advance purchase tickets to Strasbourg. It is not close, 3 hours on a direct TGV, which you can get for 80 euro for both, to and from. Strasbourg is not a place you want to drive in. Train makes more sense. That will be a long day. Are you sure Strasbourg is worth it?
3. Go to Annecy and spend the night, then move on to Chamonix. Annecy is about half way in between. No sense doubling back like that.

If you plan to spend only 4 nights in Lyon and spend your days doing trips to Provence, Strasbourg, and Annecy, I think you need to stick to the train. Driving sounds exhausting to me. I'm also assuming that you don't mean rural Provence. You could easily visit Arles or Avignon by train. Is that what you mean?

As far as a pass goes, check the fares by buying tickets. If you buy in advance, you mcan save a lot of money. The passes are awkward to use where you are required to have a seat reservation. Other threads have covered this.

Edited to add: you might want to rethink where you want to go so that you don't do so much chasing around. You're going a long way each day, by train or by car.

Have a lovely trip!

Those are huge distances every day. You'll be spending more time seeing the inside of trains than the regions. There's a lot to see in Lyon and environs. Have you considered staying closer to your base?

Ok thanks so much everyone! this is my first time planning a trip in Europe, so it's been really stressful.
Is Strasbourg not worth it? My mom saw it featured on a show and it was so pretty, she's been wanting to go.

Rail Europe is the pass to get, correct?
We were going to get the 4 day pass for France. Also, should we be booking all the train tickets/times for each day now or can we wait to do that?

If we have a rail pass, can we get on some of the buses as well?

I don't think a rail pass is the answer.

If you do go to Strasbourg, I'm seeing a Prems fare for 20 euro per person leaving at 6 am and returning at 7:30 pm for the same price. This is for a weekday in early October. If you go with a rail pass, you will still need to buy a reservation for each way, and TGV has a quota of rail pass holders allowed on a train.

Going to Provence (where?) same deal, but the discount tickets are more expensive.

Annecy and Chamonix are on TER trains (French regional trains). They do not have advance discounts, but if one or both of you are under 26 or over 59, you can get a 25% discount for some trains.

First of all, rail Europe is a travel agency, not a national rail co. They only list some of the routes, and their prices are often higher than buying directly. I find the German rail website bahn.com to be the most user-friendly for finding schedules, although you won't be able to buy France tickets there. You need to buy those from the rail company.

Second, all of the high speed trains in France require seat reservations. It's been a few years, but I seem to remember the reservations being about €15 per segment (so if you transfer trains in the middle of the trip, you end up needing two reservations). You need to make the reservations yourself, and add that to the cost of the rail pass.

Most important, in my experience, is the fact that France severely limits the number of seats available to pass holders. Consequently, there may be lots of seats available, but none available to you as a pass holder. You then have the choice of buying a full price ticket (paying twice, since you are leaving a pass segment unused), or changing your travel plans and waiting for a train that has seats available to pass holders. So if you get a pass, make your seat reservations as soon as possible.

While I prefer trains over driving, I buy point to point tickets because, for me, they've been cheaper than a pass.

One additional point to clarify – if you buy point to point tickets (rather than a rail pass) you do not need to buy a separate seat reservation. It is included in the price of the ticket.

And I really liked Strasburg, although I liked Colmar even better (about 30 minutes further by train; smaller town versus a large city). If your mom really wants to go, I think it's worth it. However, I would probably do it as an overnight stay, and visit both Strasburg and Colmar

Ok, so what I'm getting is to just by point-to-point tickets for each day we're exploring a different city as opposed to getting a rail pass. That would mean we would have to know exactly which day was going to be for which city, correct? I heard train ticket prices go up as you get closer to the date, so I should be booking the tickets now?

thanks so much everyone!

and by provence, i meant just avignon and arles. I feel like we are doing a lot by going to a different city each day and coming back to Lyon, but my mom thinks it's doable and she's the one that has travelled to France already. She doesn't think we need that much time in Lyon, so wants to just explore it for a day or two, but does want to stay in one city so that we don't have to worry about hauling bags around and finding hotels each day, etc.

Yes, prices for TGV trains (ones for Strasbourg and Avignon) will go up as low fares sell out and only higher priced full fare tickets remain.
TER fares are fixed, they don't change. That is the trains going to Annecy and Chamonix. You can also use TER trains to Avignon and Arles. It will take an extra hour to get there (2 hr and 20 min vs 1 hr and 30 min for a TGV), but is not too bad.
So if you still want a rail pass, and you want to go to Strasbourg, you should make a reservation as soon as possible to make sure you can get on the trains. It is not possible to do this trip with TER trains, it will take all day.
Read through this: http://www.seat61.com/Railpass-and-Eurail-pass-guide.htm#supplements cost

You don't say what your mom's age is. Is it possible that this may be towards the end of her ability to travel? In that case, I would accommodate mom, but your description has you barreling all over a place the size of Texas. Biarritz is in El Paso, then fly to Dallas (Lyon), then get on a train/drive to Houston (Annency), to Corpus Christie(Provence), to Lubbock(Strasbourg- wrong direction but correct distance) and then over to Odessa/Midland to meet your cousin.

Whew! I'm not sure what you'd see except train stations. Also, how much stuff is mom planning on taking that she couldn't put it back in her bag each day and move on? If mom really wants to base it somewhere for four days (and I'm totally on board with that), then I think you need to scale down where you want to go. Pick two of those. Or, simply do the Biarritz on the southwest Spain/France coast and enjoy the sexy Basque men (and they are) and what coastal France in October has to offer and then work your way towards Chamonix.

As far as a car vs. train, 1) how comfortable are you with a manual transmission? 2) are you meandering or sightseeing major tourist sights?

have fun!

I'll preface my response by saying that I love Strasbourg but it is almost four hours away from Lyon by most high speed trains and a little over three hours on some (depends on the number of stops) so you are looking at a minimum of around 6 hours of round trip travel time for a day trip. Only you and your mother can decide if 6 to 8 hours of total travel time is a reasonable amount for a day trip. And, I agree that it makes no sense to go to Annecy for a day only to return to Lyon to got to Chamonix the next day. Depending on the train schedule, I would probably rent a car and drive from Annecy to Chamonix. But as mentioned before, can you drive a manual transmission vehicle? If you cannot, chances are that the only place where you will easily get one as between Lyon and Annecy is Lyon.

The fast TGV trains in France encourage advance reservations whether you are buying tickets (discount rates available on a limited number of seats) or a France Rail Pass plus seat reservations (similarly limited, not even for sale in the last 3 days before departure of the TGV; they basically treat the pass holder like a discount ticket buyer). There's no deadline to buy a reserved ticket, but you'd be likely to pay full fare on short notice.

Rail passes don't usually cover buses (e.g., not around the Luberon), but they cover some shuttle buses operated by the railway (SNCF), such as from Aix-en-Provence TGV station to Aix's central train station. I would expect a pass to cover the Lyon-Annecy bus that is reflected on train schedules, but have not confirmed that.

Regarding using Lyon as a home base: This is one city where Rick doesn't provide any hotel recommendations particularly close to the train stations; you'd usually connect by metro. As it's a major city, I also would not look forward to driving in and out more than necessary, or paying for garage parking.

I think all of you destinations are "worth it" but you will be so rushed with all the travel time. If it were my trip I would choose Arles/Avignon or Strasbourg or the French Alps. Again, if it were my trip, I would do Arles/Avignon with the option to go to Orange for the theatre, pont du Gard, nimes. If you have your flight already, you could take the train to Avignon and then do what I mention as day trips.

I think your proposed trip is too many places in too short of time.

Let's not gloss over the importance of TGV seat reservations if you have a pass, in my case last year it limited the train(s) I could take and so I had to build my schedule around theirs (and not at my convenience). It still worked out OK but I couldn't get my first choices.

I find I rent cars more these days. A train works great when you are traveling from city center to city center, and is cheaper if you are only two people. As the group gets larger or your itinerary gets more involved (more intermediate stops between cities) a car becomes a better option.

In your case, if your day trips are into cities a train will eliminate traffic and parking worries but may limit your visits based on when the train runs. If you can build a decent schedule for your visits, I'd opt for the train.