Rent car in South France

Roe has great advice! All good and I second it. Bobbie

There are all kinds of roads on that route, from superhighway A roads down to dinky C (Communal). It is a great deal of driving, but would make a splendid road trip if you allot enough time. A trip like that could take you to places where English is not widely spoken. Fortunately your key interactions with non-English speakers will largely be simple and driven by commerce. You will want to buy something that they want to sell you! So you learn a few basic words and phrases, point, improvise, and get by. If that prospect terrifies you then I suppose this is not a good idea for your trip, but it is really not difficult. See Rick Steves' Europe Through the Back Door, especially his chapter on "hurtling the language barrier," as prep. The alternative is to take France's excellent trains to Arles (a charming place by the way). This has the advantage of being much faster than driving, but you miss the road trip. You can rent a car in Provence to visit the countryside. I hope you and your mother have a lovely time.

Thank you so much yes we had consider also part by rail Will look that over some more.14-16 day is our plan fly in to Paris then out of Nice or other point south. Like idea of home basing 3-4 night stay and branching out easy breezy soaking up the culture. Some B & B offer a bit of local tour and cooking class. I am a foodie mom is NOT ! Have a great summer.

I would strongly recommend that you take the TGV train from Paris to Avignon (2.5 hours, far far faster than you could drive), pick up the rental car at the ultramodern Avignon TGV station (which has an enormous selection of car rental companies) and then make the easy and scenic drive to Arles and eventually on to Nice, perhaps dropping the car at the Nice Airport to avoid the in-town Nice traffic.

If your wish is to zip down to the south of France as quickly and comfortably as possible, it's absolutely true that you can't beat the TGV. But if you want to drive, your route can be driven pretty much all on "autoroutes", France's equivalent to our interstate highways. Your route would take you down from Reims via Troyes, Dijon, Lyon, Valence, down to Arles & Avignon. You'd go through both the champagne and the burgundy regions and you'd have no trouble finding charming b&b's & towns along the way. It's a lot of driving - I've done it more than once - but a lot of fun. The highways in France are excellent. I think it gets down to what method of travel you prefer. The fact that you're English speakers will be NO problem. The French people entertain millions of English-speaking visitors every year, and they're very used to it.