Road trip

This is quite a lot of ground to cover in two weeks. Too much ground in my opinion, basically 300 miles every other day (2000 total) excluding side trips and taking the most direct route.

From Marseille in two weeks I would go no further north and east than the Dolomites / Venice, then loop back. And it's already a lot!

A more reasonable loop would be Marseille-Lubéron-Annecy-Piedmont-Portofino-Nice-Marseille

Have you traveled in Europe before? There is so much more "per mile" of interest than in the US. If you are driving across the US you will go for hundreds of miles with little change in scenery, with few or no towns of 'tourist' interest. But in Europe there is something every few miles. To drive all that distance you suggest in two weeks you will zoom past 95% of what there is to see. Most people could spend two weeks driving around Provence and not get bored. Certainly if you want to add a bit more it would be reasonable to include the Cote d'Azure area. And if you really wanted to add another country then go a bit further and include some of Italy. You could plan a loop that would take you into a corner of Switzerland so you could include a third country. That would be pretty fast paced but not crazy and would include coastal and mountain scenery. But in my opinion, going to Vienna and back from Marseille in two weeks would just be a tremendous waste of time and money.

Speaking for myself I would drive from Marseille to Vienna if you can fly back home from the latter, but dropping your rental car in another country means serious extra costs. Otherwise I would skip Vienna and shearing isabel's idea to drive from Marseille to northern Italy with it’s many historic places and visit for instance the Italian lakes at the southside of the Alps. Further back to France through Switzerland, numerous options for a memorable trip.

Thank you for all your suggestions. We may not get up to Austria as we had hoped so the idea is to take a long leisurely drive to wherever life takes us within a 4-6 drive from Marseille to drop the car off. Looking for suggestions on which rental car company to use. Have been online with Auto Europe and Rentalcars.com. Any others? Also if you have suggestions on where to stay (a place that you enjoyed and would return) for about 100 Euros a night. Could be more if extra special.

Here's another difficulty : dropping off a car in a different country costs big $$$. So if you rent a car in Marseille, you really should drop it off somewhere in France (drop off fees are typically low/zero depending on renter within France). For instance, from Marseille it's easy to drive to Liguria and Piedmont in Italy, then back west to the French Alps.

I will be returning it to Marseille.

All right then! Don't hesitate to report back when you have a route in mind, if you need more tips.

We always use AutoEurope for our European rentals and have always been very pleased with service and rates

Many thanks. Will advise when plans firm up.

First night in La Seyne-sur-Mer if that helps. Anyone with recommendations on a hotel?

So we're discussing a trip that starts in 4 weeks or less? I'd go to a site like booking.com or hotels.com to start and look for anything available with a rating over 8.0. Be sure to click the filter for "show only available properties"

For La Seyne sur Mer, I recommend Le Bon Abri in neighboring Sanary. Free parking, reasonable rates. You would need to call them (ideally, or drop an email) to check availability and book, however : they haven't joined booking, Hotels.com et al. The oddly-named "Holidays and Work" Hotel is quite good too, but not sure about parking.

More generally, while in the area I wholly recommend spending some time / the evening in Sanary, it's a very charming town by the harbor.
Conversely, some parts of La Seyne sur Mer are decidedly uninspiring (malls, housing estates...) so check locations carefully.