On a general basis, is it smart to avoid trying to pick up a rental car on a Saturday or Sunday in locations outside of Airports? Previous European experience has led me to think the Saturday afternoon through Sunday window is not a go particularly in small towns.
Thoughts?
From my experience, broadly speaking Saturdays are better than Sundays, where car rental locations are often indeed closed entirely.
However, these days I think you can generally find pretty reliable hours of operation information online for individual car-rental locations, particularly for locations of major car rental companies (Avis, Hertz, etc.) If you're in the trip planning stage it's worth taking a look at actual locations to see what the hours look like -- might as well look early so you don't plan an entire leg of a trip around picking up a car on a day when the branch is not open.
My experience with renting cars in France is Sundays can be an issue. Many smaller town agencies won't offer business hours on Sundays. Saturdays are normally fine. Many, if not most, rental agencies, even in larger cities, schedule long lunches. Normal operating hours are likely to be something like 7-11 and 1-6. If you search for rental cars and put a pick up or drop off time of noon, as an example, the choices get really small. Use a mid-morning or mid-afternoon pick up/drop off time to get more choices. Afterwards you can talk with the agency directly. If you have trouble getting there outside their lunch hour, call and let them know. Often they'll adjust their schedule to help you out (but not always). I picked up a car in Rouen in the morning, before walking around town, because I expected to leave a little before they opened up after lunch.
Last May we wanted to rent a car for our week in Tours. Our problem was we would get in late Saturday and would be leaving Sunday. I rent from Hertz and the office in Tours would be closed then.
We ended up renting at CDG and returning to Gare du Nord. It worked, but it was a big adventure!
