Rental car pickup and drop offs near Paris

You can enter your planned drives into viamichelin.com and you will get directions, an estimate of tolls, estimate of fuel cost and and an optimistic estimate of the amount of time each drive should take. If you do not rent from Hertz or Avis, you probably will not have a drop off charge so I would not bother with driving to CDG and just to head back to Paris. I suggest that you just drop the car off in Paris at Gare de Lyon which you can get to with a minimal amount of non-highway driving.

Check both..

http://www.kemwel.com

and http://www.autoeurope.com

Outbound, you'd have to be both blind and stupid to get into Paris accidentally - - there's two intervening ring roads with signs everywhere pointing to Rouen.

Inbound, do just what JHK said and cut into Gare de Lyon instead of continuing out to Roissy. It's not hard to follow a river until you see a clock tower.

What you're thinking about will add at least a half day of logistics time at each end and gosh knows how much money.

You can't equate distance to tolls since the pattern is so irregular.

Last fall we tried to return a car to Gare de l'Est ... driving around Normandy had been simple and we had GPS, no problem, right ? We did NOT have directions to exactly where the Hertz rental office was located. (Underneath the station, accessible through one of two garages ... but the only Hertz sign was about 2 feet square and located on a garage entrance down a driveway off the main street.) GPS gave directions like "take third exit" but when five streets come together ... and some of them might be driveways ... and there are about 100 cars coming from all directions ... well, it was an experience. Great story material.

But it CAN be done. Now my DH feels he can drive anywhere.

If you are arriving after an all night flight from the states it is really irresponsible to pick up a rental car and start driving long distances. Not only do you endanger yourselves but think of the other poor souls on the road. If you plan to do this, I would hope you would have a nearby initial destination for that first jet lag day and night.

Ed, what did you mean by the following: "What you're thinking about will add at least a half day of logistics time at each end and gosh knows how much money." Sorry I can't figure out what I said that would lead to that conclusion.

Ed, would you suggest we leave with a car from CDG to drive to Normandy or go pick up a rental car at Gare du Nord, which apparently you suggested to someone on the Paris, Normandy, Britney thread? Or some other place like Porte Maillot?

I can see where it seems sort of foolish money-wise to take a train to Normandy area and pick up a car because you have both train and car costs that day, especially when four of us would need to take a train. Only way I can see that to pay off would be if we could go to the Normandy beaches area (staying there two nights) with a guide for the beaches and perhaps delay getting the car for a couple of days and saving that amount of car rental money. Same thing at the end of our trip. Once we get to Colmar we don't really need a car (I've been to Colmar) except maybe one day to do the wine route. We could then drop off our car in Colmar and save about two days of car rental and take the train in from Colmar to Paris. Thoughts on the above anyone? Thanks everyone.

My suggestions were based on two of your statements:

. Picking up the car west of Paris

. Dropping the car at Roissy

Outbound : Assuming that 'west' is Versailles (or anyplace else for that matter) you've got an hour to get into the city, an hour to switch stations, and an hour to get somewhere else. Maybe a slight exaggeration, but when you figure moving four people, junk, bathroom stops, ticket buying, transfer time, getting turned around, it's pretty close. The tickets for four will add up. All of this and you've barely started moving. You can drive from the airport to Caen in well less than three hours.

Inbound: Coming up from Colmar, you'd pass within less than ten minutes of Gare de Lyon enroute to CDG and be within ten minutes of the Latin Quarter, actually just a few blocks from the Sorbonne. From the point you turned off the peripherique, you'd still be almost another hour from turning in the car, another hour from getting back into town, and something more to get exactly where you're staying. Another batch of tickets and moving the mob plus junk.

Taking the train over from is a new thought, but is certainly a viable option if there's nothing that interests you along the way.

If I suggested Nord or somewhere else on another thread, it would have been in response to some one whose initial departure was from the city center.

So Ed I think bottom line is that you think we will get along just fine by driving rental car out of CDG and dropping it off in Gare de Lyon?

Yep.

It's so simple that, if I were doing it myself, I'd drop the crowd at the hotel along with my bag, scoot across to G. Lyon to drop the car, walk across the Austerlitz bridge, swing up through the botanical park, stop for a coffee/beer, and be standing in the lobby before everybody else got back downstairs.

FWIW, I agree with Ed's overall strategy. Not so sure about that last bit where you drive through the Latin Quarter to your hotel, drop everyone, drive to Gare de Lyon, walk back, get a beer, and be waiting for the rest in the lobby. Ed could pull that off, but few others!

Another alternative, which I would consider if you could buy your 4 rail tickets early enough to get a good price for four, is to return the car in Strasbourg and take the TGV back to Paris. That is a loooong drive but only 2 hours 20 minutes on the train, and avoids the experience of driving back into Paris.

You should be able to do this since your trip isn't until September. Remember when comparing costs to consider not only the cost of the car rental, but also the tolls and gas/diesel fuel, well as your sanity in trying to drive into Paris. I will concede that the TGV brings you into Gare de l'Est, which isn't as convenient for your hotel, so you do have to figure metro/taxi from the station to your hotel if you consider this option.

Sounds like a great trip, have fun!!

You can book the TGV departing Colmar or Strasbourg for as low as 25 euros per person if you get it 3-4 months in advance. Of course, these rates are the first to sell out. Rick’s France rail travel page has the link and tips for buying “Prems” rate TGV tickets through SNCF (cheap, reserved, nonrefundable) to print at home and pay with PayPal. It does not tend to work with US credit cards, unless you have an extra level of security set up.