Renting a car in Spain

Eight or nine bucks a gallon. A small car will get fourty per. Parking's not much a problem. Seville can be a bit heavy in traffic going in and out. Bilbao doesn't have too many bridges over the river, so watch yourself. The rest are easy.

We drove all over Spain in 2010 (over 4,000 kilometers). Great highways and side roads from the north to the south. The freedom to stop, even for a few moments (photo op), anywhere you'd like. If you drive up to Bilbao - check out San Sebastian while you're in the neighbourhood. Salamanca is not that far from Segovia either. Our rental car went forever on a tank of diesel - no odour and TONS of pep. I did not expect the ease of merging with this car. When you arrive in the large cities - park ASAP. Much easier walking around and there are lots of safe parking lots. One trick that I used, if you must motor through busy city traffic and multiple circles, follow a cab until he changes routes and then follow another one. This worked for us! The taxis know exactly how to zip thru traffic. We took our GPS and a map from home. You can preload addresses at home and then just hit 'favourites' and get led to the front door. The food at Spain's gas stops is a lot better than most of the food along our highways. We are both in our mid 50s and will rent a car next time.

Thanks Bob and Ed, a lot of good suggestions. We have not been to Spain, but in Italy on a past trip, we traveled solely by train and found that it was fairly easy to get around. In Spain, we are planning on spending less time at more destinations making travelling by train seem more expensive and more difficult to schedule. We are in our 20's. We are also hoping to stay as cheap as possible meaning that we may be staying in hostels, B&B's, or apartments depending on the length of stay and the location. I have found a lot of them indicate that there is no parking available, But I am not sure if this just means that they don't have any private lots, but would parking be available down the street. Parking is our biggest concern as we are planning on the car to be our means of transportation between cities and towns, but plan to tackle them mainly by foot. From what I have researched, it doesn't seem like it is that much of an issue, but we don't want any surprises.

Probabably in the city center you'd park in a garage for twenty or thirty euro per night. On the outskirts, there's always room on the street within a block at most and you don't have to worry about your stuff.

We took a 2 week road trip in a rental car in Spain last May. Parking wasn't really an issue - we booked hotels that had it available -navigating in the towns was more of a challenge. We had a Garman GPS, a Michelin Atlas, Spain highway map, and Google maps of the neighborhoods near the hotels. We used them all and it went relatively well. It was necessary to have a human navigator to override the GPS on occasion. We might have had better luck with a Tom-Tom, who knows, suggestions online were mixed. Our other advice – get the smallest car you can stand, because city/town roads are narrow and parking garages/spots are microscopic. Learn traffic signs ahead of time (there is a good page on trip advisor about driving in Spain. My personal favorite is the "end no passing" which is counterintuitive). When you check out of your hotel, ask the best way to get out of town, often they'll mark up a map for you. We also downloaded the speed cameras database into the GPS. Lastly, expect to be pulled over for an insurance check. We saw plenty of check points and were selected once. It was a non-event. You'll be fine driving, but you might not have enough time to see all of those places in only 10 days. Map your route in Google Maps to see if the drive times leave you with enough sight-seeing time.

Glen, driving is easy in Spain, and the car gives you lots of flexability. Don't worry about parking; there is always a parking garage nearby, even though they may not be cheap. Take your GPS with you, and good Michelin map of the country. We were warned that many of the East-West roads were not in our GPS, and found that to be very true! Check out the rental rates on AutoEurope.com, being mindfull that picking your car up at an airport can add to your cost. Play with the pick-up options to see how this may affect you.

That's a lot of driving in ten days. I think it's doable if you only want to see those specific places. A car works best for traveling on your schedule and having the flexibility to stop when/where you want. It might also be ambitious to "explore" 8 places in ten days - you may have to settle for "a look around". We're renting a car for three weeks (part of a four week trip) and realize we don't have time to see a big chunk of Spain. A month sounds like a long time until you map it out. Use viamichelin.com to guage rough driving times for each leg. I don't like to plan more than four hours of driving time in a day. That allows time to get up, check out, eat a quick breakfast, get on the road, make a stop for lunch and maybe a quick stop, or two, for sights, get to your destination, check-in, unpack, look around a little then find some dinner. Personal experience has taught me if I plan longer driving times for one day, I'll be sorry. Either I'll arrive very late or have to skip everything on the way to stay on schedule. If you don't plan any intermediate stops, you could save money by taking busses - check the schedule/buy tickets for your next leg on arrival at each stop.

We travel by car in Spain a lot, usually once a year. Even though the gas is quite expensive, if you rent an economy or compact car, you get very good mileage. The highways in Spain are great, even the side roads. If you are going to spain for only 10 days, you are going to cover a lot of area. Since it seems you want to see more towns in the South, I would suggest you catch the AVE from Madrid to Sevilla, rent a car in Sevilla and take day trips to Granada, Nerja and Tarifa. Gibraltar is farther than you might think. Instead of going to Gibraltar, I would drive towards San Sebastian and Bilbao, and then go to Segovia and Toledo. I imagine you're flying back out of Madrid. If you run out of time, go to Toledo and skip Segovia. Although the Aqueduct is amazing, Toledo is bewitching and you should see it. No matter how much you go to Spain, you will never be able to see everything. Every region is beautiful and interesting. I have found it easier to concentrate in a Region each time we go and we get to see the country better. Good luck!

I forgot to tell us that we now take our Garmin GPS. We bought a Western Europe chip that includes Spain. This last trip we used it and it was a God sent. It guided us into cities easily and we never got lost, as in other trips.