Driving in Provence

I have driven in Provence twice with ease. I stayed in Arles becuz it is a gd visit and overnight street parking is avail. Usually. Be sure to get a small car and make sure your lodging has parking recs for u.
It is a relaxed area to drive. Realize if u rent in another country and teturn in France drop off charges will be large. Otherwise i say driving in France in gen is easy except for big cities like Marsailles or Paris.

We drove in Burgundy and Provence in May -- had easy parking at the hotel in Beaune and gite in St Remy, but driving and parking in the bigger cities of Lyon, Orange and Nimes were more difficult. Parking in underground structures, not all of which recognized our credit cards.
Lots of roundabouts in the countryside, but scenic driving.

In towns and cities expect to pay for parking, often quite a lot.

Any driver in France from the US will require an IDP (I think you previously indicated you are from the US) or you can get a special translation of your licence but an IDP is really easy and probably much cheaper. An IDP is required for driving in Italy.

You need to be aware of the dreaded ZTLs in Italy and avoid them at peril of a large fine sometime after you have returned.

If you use either the Italian Autostrada or the French Autoroute you need to have plenty of coins and notes (bills) in the car as the tolls are quite high and US credit cards are not always accepted at the toll booths.

When you drive into Switzerland you will need to buy a Swiss toll Vignette sticker for your windscreen. It will cost CHF40.

Be careful about driving into the centre of large French cities with an Italian rental car. No not crime, your Italian car probably won't have a French pollution control sticker on the windscreen (yellow, round, written in French). Without the sticker it is illegal to drive into low pollution areas.

It appears that your plan is to return the car in Genova or another Italian city. If not, consider the very high drop charges to return the car in a different country.

A safety concern in the Cote d'Azur is the narrow hilly fast Corniches along the coast and in the mountains. Remember that Princess Grace of Monaco was killed in a car accident not far from home on the Corniche.

We drove there in 2015, and will do so again next month.

Never really had much issue with parking - it's great having a GPS because you can have it show you where the parking garages are. I think we had a bit of an issue driving in Aix, but not bad. And we will probably avoid indoor parking garages this trip depending on the size car we have. Last time, it was a Citroen Cactus - smaller than an SUV, but bigger than a sedan - and ended up scraping the car door on a tight turn in a parking garage (in St Paul de Vence) - and judging from the look of the corner, that happened a lot. So we are going to look more at outdoor lots.

The only other thing that happened was driving thru a small town and a big tour bus almost run us off the road (our car tire actually went over the curb towards the ditch, but we got back up)...so just take it slow around big buses.

Ugh - and roundabouts - when we first arrived, we wanted to save money by taking the secondary roads - so...many...roundabouts. We changed our GPS setting from avoid toll road to allow toll roads and our arrival time went down by over an hour, so if you are in a hurry, take a toll road. We always had cash and change on hand for the tolls.

I think people have you covered... I'll add a few more points (used to live in Switzerland, have offices in Italy, driven in Greece). If you've driven in the Greek mainland (as opposed to the more sparse islands), you'll have no problems on your route (with that crazy Greek practice of creating a lane out of the shoulder of the road).

In and just outside the main cities on your route in Italy will be the most challenging, Milan in particular (and you likely know Genoa as well). As mentioned, in France, Lyon can be the trickiest due to its size, then perhaps around Aix (and of course, if you decide to stop along the Cote d'Azur). Just FYI, when people mention tolls are expensive in France, the fastest stretch between Lyon and Nice exceeds 84E. We are not talking "spiccioli"/"petite monnaie".

In Switzerland, you may also need a blue parking disk to park in the blue zones. It can be picked up in grocery stores and where they sell vignettes, if you don't have one in your car. Driving in Switzerland is the among the least stressful in the world, other than some tight underground parking garages. Speed cameras are everywhere, including on surface streets in certain cities.

In two driving trips through Province, I have not had any difficulties driving or parking. The rules of the road are understood and followed by all. (Although I scraped a fender in a parking garage in Avignon; be sure your credit card covers the damages.) In larger towns you may have to look for parking, but it will be there. If you take toll roads, carry cash. Some toll roads do not take our credit cards.

We are driving in provence this week. Easy in smaller areas (we are near Apt). No IDP required. Our WA state license were just fine. Parking is mostly free in Luberon hill towns and easy to find right now. Suspect this is different in July/August.

Just returned from Provence....I was the driver. All I can add is get as small a car as possible. I didn't mind driving in other areas of France but the hill/small towns in Provence drove me to drink :) I'd rather drive in Antibes or Nice or most anywhere in the Cote de Azure. I always rent cars vis AutoEurope and always take the full coverage with no deductible which is something I never do domestically.

Most of the picturesque villages have a parking area set aside outside the village walls, so you can park and walk into the villages. They do fill up as the day goes on.

Do not leave anything visible inside your car.

"No IDP required. Our WA state license were just fine."

Christy ; you say this why because the rental car rented to you or because you were stopped by the police and told this.
IDP is not a rental requirement and Hertz/Auto Europe/Avis will never ask to see one but from what I have read if you are stopped by the police or asked to give an ID by the police you will be fined if you do not have one and only have your WA or whatever state drivers license.
If you can share what you mean it would help, I suspect you just got lucky and should be careful telling others to do the same.

To the OP: my biggest concern for you is how are you going to rent and return in the same country for your route to work?
Dropping off in another country than you rent from would be very expensive.