March trip to Spain & France, possibly Italy or Portugal... weather/driving conditions

First of all, congratulations.

With 8-10 days, choose any two of these countries. No more. You'll see more of those small towns and countryside and have a better trip.

If what you really want is a whirlwind sampler, maybe 3 countries. But you'll mostly be in cities or in transit.

I'm not sure how you are counting the days. You need one to get to Europe and one to get back home. You'll probably be jetlagged when you land and your first day you won't have much energy or really be able to take in very much.

Use the Via Michelin website to estimate driving times. Use the German train website bahn.de for train schedules. You will probably incur huge drop-off charges on a rental car if you don't return it in the same country you rent in. It looks like about 5 hours by train from Marseille to Barcelona. Add in the time to pick up a new car and drive to your first stop in Spain, and that's most of the day gone.

Also take a good look at the terms and conditions for cars. If you are planning to drive through snowy mountain roads, you are likely to need snow tires and/or chains. Never tried it in Europe, but I know that there are places in the U.S. where you are simply not allowed to continue on a road unless you have chains.

Riverain:

I too used to rent a car and drive as many miles as possible in a short time. $9 per gallon gasoline cured me of that. We now have discovered the merits of traveling slowly and working out of a centrally located location doing day trips to interesting places.

Your time is just too short to take on more than a couple of locations. And the winter weather usually breaks the last of March in lower altitudes. Portugal is okay to travel that time of year, but it's far to other places. You might want to stick to areas to the south, however.

For small cities and geography, Northern Italy is hard to beat. There is just so much history, art, food and culture. Two trips ago, we spend 3 days in London, flew to Pisa (on EasyJet.com) and spent a long weekend in Florence. We moved to an agriturismo (farm stay) just south of Florence and did day trips throughout Tuscany. We also ran up to Venice for a day before finishing our trip at an agriturismo south of Rome. This region is very centrally located and a great place for a romantic honeymoon.

Thank you all for the advice, it does make more sense to just visit 2 countries (I was thinking 10 days, but really 2 flying and 8 touring). I like the idea of a 'home base' in each country and with local daytrips, so we don't plan to see a huge area, but did want a taste of 2-3 different regions.

We are only renting the car in France, and returning it to the same spot (even different city return in the same country is a few hundred USD). I know it's going to cost a lot, but driving on well known touring & racing roads makes my fiance happy and we may not be able to travel again for a few years. So, I figure I get a ring, he gets a rented little euro car for a few days... :0) Good to know to check the rental policies on snow and whether they provide snow tires/chains! I hadn't even thought of that. I was wondering how clear the roads are kept.

Northern Italy does sound beautiful for a honeymoon. Maybe we will get lucky and the weather will reach 70F while we are there like this past year!

Auto rentals normally do not include a surcharge for drop-offs within France even if different from pick-up. If someone wants to charge you for that I would shop around a bit, because who know what else they are doing?

The thing with winter and mountain roads is that you can be on one when it starts to snow. A car that can't continue would be screwing up the road-clearing as well as other traffic. It's probably not a big deal. Just look at the extra options when checking out the rentals.

As for drop-off charges, what I've seen is that when I price a rental, often the daily rate is higher if the return is in a different city in the same country. It's not shown as a separate charge, but it's still there. I've also seen that rates can fluctuate a lot and in my experience they tend to increase as the dates get nearer. It doesn't hurt to make a reservation well in advance, as long as you can cancel it without penalty.

Congratulations, and France is a great honeymoon location (ours was in the Champagne region)! In the hills to the north of Nice, be sure to incude a visit to Saint Paul de Vence. Villefranche-sur-Mer to the east is also worth a visit. North of Cannes, the perfume center of Grasse was kind of a letdown and seemed too industrial.

Are you flying from France to the south of Spain (or vice versa)? If you're as far west as Cassis or Marseilles, check out the calanques!

For a future trip, Sicily offers some exciting driving opportunities, including the extremely narrow streets in many hilltowns.

Just to dampen your boyfriend enthusiasm for fast driving on tight curves, Europe has heavily adopted photo cameras everywhere just to discourage that type of driving. Italy can track you average speed over distance. Then about a year later you get a very expensive reminder of your trip in the mail.

Thanks for all the information! My fiance and I talked ourselves down to focusing on France for this trip, I didn't realize it was so diverse until I started reading more about the various regions! We are planning to spend 11 days / 10 nights toward the end of March, flying into Nice and coming back home from Paris. We'll be renting a car and driving around, and I warned my fiance about the prolific cameras...

I suppose I should move my future questions about France to that specific forum. But, just wanted to thank everyone for the tips and suggestions. We'll now have a slower pace that suits our tendency to ramble around the countryside, get a few good hikes in, eat a LOT, and if we are lucky, the weather/rain will cooperate and we can do some canoeing or kayaking. Now, if my Rick Steve's 2015 France book would just get here so I can start plotting our route!!!

Sounds like a great plan. Well done.

One more teeny caveat about speeding in France...the cameras there also record- i strongly suggest a GPS device which can warn you of the cameras. The French police can fine you on the spot for speeding up to $1,000 http://www.thelocal.fr/20130530/france-cracks-down-on-speeding-foreign-drivers.
Southern France IMHO is quite beautiful- you can't go wrong with a good guidebook and a GPS...

It is ILLEGAL to use a GPS which shows speed camera locations in France. The penalties are worse than for the speeding offence.

It is legal to have a map/printout/gps which identify areas as "hazardous".

There is a huge part of France not covered by Rick Steves and Gene Openshaw [edit - ,meant Steve Smith]. If you are limiting yourself to France this trip, pick up a Michelin Green guide to France or the region(s) you want to explore - or another good guide or guides.

In an area about the size of Texas, France is just chock full of diverse and varied areas. You don't have to travel far to see something new.

It is an amazing country.

Rick Steves' and Steve Smith's France guidebook still offers a great resource for many areas of France, so it's good to study.

And speeding or not, be prepared for French tailgaiters. The driver behind you may even be able to help you read your Rick Steves book if you hold it high enough to be seen thru the rear window of your rental car ;-)

Rick Steves' and Steve Smith's France guidebook still offers a great resource for many areas of France, so it's good to study.

And speeding or not, be prepared for French tailgaiters. The driver behind you may even be able to help you read your Rick Steves book if you hold it high enough to be seen thru the rear window of your rental car ;-)

Well, that is good to know... We may do a section from the Monte Carlo Rally while in the area (Col de Turini), but within the speed limit. I get really carsick when he tries to go fast on mountain roads (my green face will be a better speed deterrent than any camera)... Plus, he's able to just relax and enjoy the scenery.

Living in the DC area, I am well acquainted with tailgaiting, rude, and generally inept driving (we are #1 -- worst drivers in the US, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2013/08/28/all-your-suspicions-confirmed-washington-has-nations-worst-drivers/). I'm hoping the French are a little better than us on the roads... If not, we may feel right at home...

Thanks for the tip about the Michelin guides, for some reason it never occurred to me that the Michelin stars were related to the tire company... I ordered a green guide to read while I wait for the 2015 Rick Steve's France guide to be released in the next month or two. We're spending the bulk of the time in the south, but want to spend a day or two in Normandy at the end (we fly home from Paris). We haven't decided how to get from the south to Normandy though (ditch the car and take a train? or drive? and if we drive, do we go west/central/east?).