Our family, of 8, will be landing in London this summer, for 15 days, with plans to spend a few days in Orscholz, Germany, then onto Germany's Romantic Road, Munich, Paris and then back to London to fly out. I'm thinking of taking the train to Brussels, renting two cars there, to travel to the different cities, and then returning the cars back in Brussels before taking the train to London for our flight out. Is this a sound plan or is there a better way to travel?
Posted by
Downingtown, USA
2444 posts
Have you booked tickets yet? If not, suggest you fly into London and home from brussels so not back tracking to London.
Posted by
Minneapolis
1260 posts
Hi Tiffany. To echo and expand on Gails' comment... perhaps fly to London,then train to Paris, then train to Germany to rent cars, drop cars in Munich and fly from there. Or some version of above. Minimize backtracking, also avoid having a rental car when visiting big cities like Paris. Enjoy your trip!
Posted by
OP
Green Bay, WI, United States
11 posts
Already arrival and departure in London.
Posted by
Green Bay
21117 posts
Sounds good to me. If you really want the answer, you need to price out your itinerary using trains from the appropriate rail websites, get quotes for the car rental rates, insurance and gas estimate ($6 to $9 per gallon) parking (Paris and Munich a hastle). Add in benefit of more flexiblility with cars. Factor in that chidren and seniors can get discounts on rail trips. It gets complicated to get an optimal answer. Maybe travel to Luxembourg from London by train (change in Brussels to direct train to Lux), rent car in Lux for travel in Germany, return car in Lux, direct TGV train to Paris, then Eurostar back to London.
Posted by
Holdrege, NE, USA
91 posts
Rather than renting 2 cars, consider the option of renting a 8 or 9 passenger van. My travel group has done this on several occasions. Diesel, 6 speed vans in Europe get excellent mileage. This should be cheaper than 2 cars. Good Luck and Happy Travels.
Posted by
Westlake, TX, USA
33 posts
European car models can be confusing. We just rented a Mercedes Vito 9 passenger van. This was an automatic diesel and it ran very well. The van has three rows of seats with three seats in the front. It would fit 9 no problem, but the luggage could be an issue. The rear area had room to stack bags one deep. We put 6 Patagonia rolling bags in with room to spare.
Posted by
Tucson
4183 posts
Before you make final reservations for anything besides the airfare which you have already done, check the train costs for your itinerary and consult with Andy Bestor at Gemut.com. In my opinion, he is the expert on renting cars in Europe, especially for Germany. You can learn a lot from their web site on driving in Europe and you can scope out potential vehical costs, but he always seem to find a better deal than I can find, even on his web site. I'm assuming you are taking the Eurostar from London to Brussels. Google says it takes about 2.5 hours to drive from there to Orscholz. The DB website says the train would take about 4 hours with a change in Luxumbourg. Picking up and returning the vehicle in Brussels might be the best for your large group, but it would be better to return the car before you go to Paris. Then you could take the Eurostar from Paris back to London direct. Not knowing exactly when you are going, I think the trip between Paris and London on the Eurostar takes about 20 minutes longer than to and from Brussels and costs about the same price. The train from Brussels to Paris takes about 1.5 hours.
Posted by
Ann Arbor, Mi
3696 posts
One of the problems of more than 1 car (which I have done before) is keeping up with one another, finding parking in the same place, and not getting lost. Can be done, but it can add to the stress of driving in Europe...plus, what if the other car gets all the fun people???