International Car Rental from France to...anywhere?

Have you tried leasing rather than renting? I do not know what cross-border drop-off arrangements might be available (if any), but leasing is supposed to be less expensive than renting for long trips like yours.

A second possibility would be three separate rentals, something like:

Car rental Paris to Perpignan or Narbonne
Train to Barcelona
Car rental Barcelona to Vigo, Pontevedra or Santiago de Composela
Train to Porto
Car rental Porto to ???

The trip itself is not long - just 14 days, and we only need the car for about 6 - so leasing is probably not feasible. I mentioned "two months advance" meaning, I'm planning this two months ahead of time. This is not a last-minute attempt.

At this point I'm looking into taking the train, even though that takes considerably longer than driving the same distances would in a car. Another possibility I am investigating is to take a train to the Spanish border, rent a car there, return it within Spain, then fly to Lisbon and rent another car there.

I'm sorry, Stan, I mis-read. The "two-months" caught my eye.

If you have one long travel leg in there, could you fly it?

You can explore flights on Skyscanner. I don't know where you plan to end up as you cross Spain.

I have heard of flaky issues with taking a car between those counties and if you are starting in a small franchise location, it can be worse, in that they do not give up or take cars in easily, so I get the struggle. Even "large" companies, if renting from a smaller location are just a local guy with a limited number of vehicles.

You might take another look at your itinerary. 6 days from France to Portugal is a bunch of driving with not much time to see anything in Spain. Where are you stopping? maybe a train or bus would work as well, especially if the stops are Barcelona or Madrid. Save renting a car to a local area for a day or two to see the area, rather than transport from point A to B.

Hi. Just to add some info for Stan or others who may read this.. Often airport locations will be more likely to allow dropping in a different country. I checked Marseille airport to Lisbon airport on Expedia, and both Sixt and Avis allow this rental. As mentioned, though, there is a stiff drop fee - the rental itself for a week is around $200, but the drop fee is an additional $800.

Have you tested renting in France and returning somewhere else in France different from where you started?

Beyond that, where did you want to drive in Spain? Or is renting simply a hoped for way to get places faster? Everything I see shows the Iberian Peninsula as being a bit smaller than Texas.

You might try your desired route using Rome2rio. It's not perfect, but you can get an idea of the distances, the best methods to get from point A to point B, and the potential costs. For example, the fast AVE train from Barcelona to Madrid takes 2.5 hours, flying takes about 3.25 hours and driving takes about 6 hours. We loved seeing when our train hit 300 kph.

We have driven in France, but not in Spain or Portugal. We have flown to Madrid after a week in Lisbon. We have taken the fast AVE train from Barcelona to Madrid, as well as trains from Madrid to Seville, from Seville to Cordoba and back, and from Seville to San Sebastian. They varied in speed and time, and we enjoyed seeing the countryside enroute without having to focus on driving or navigating.

Postscript: So, got a reply from AutoEurope: "Unfortunately the international one way trip you have requested is not allowed from this location by the rental supplier" so they cancelled my reservation. Time is limited so adding a detour to a major city (e.g. Marseille or Bordeaux) just to rent a car is not feasible. I also looked at crossing the border from France to San Sebastian, Spain by train and renting there. The agency there was willing to do a rental to Portugal, for a $800 one-way drop-off fee, which would have made a 6 day rental about $1000. That is not in my budget!

I do think Rick and his team should add more wisdom on this subject to his section on car rental in Europe. He does mention (possibly) high one-way fees, but does not discuss the possibility that rental agencies may be unwilling to do one-way and/or international rentals at all. I might have suspected this more for former Eastern Bloc countries rather than within the EU.

I appreciate the various suggestions for alternatives. To explain a bit, we were originally registered for an organized tour of Catholic shrines from Lourdes to Fatima, but the tour was recently cancelled due to the host's health. I am trying to follow the basic itinerary, but finding it impossible in the original time frame without private transportation. Trains are very good in Europe but even there they do not run exactly when you would prefer, especially to smaller towns. Of course, the tour group would have had a private bus. Our air tickets were purchased separately so the start and end dates are fixed unless we pay very high change fees.

I'm sure this will get worked out and my wife and I will have a wonderful time, but I may have to eliminate some of the stops or extend the trip.

Hi! Is there any new information on car rental? I'm planning the same trip from Lourdes to Fatima. I was having difficult time finding a train ticket to Spain and then rent a car. Please let me know your experience? I truly appreciate it.

Hallie, I was confused for a bit, thinking this was "still" StanM's post. See this thread, too, for a similar, recent discussion: https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/italy/assisi-to-lourdes-to-fatima.

There is only one direct train from the area of the France/Spain border to Portugal and it's an overnight train departing from Irun or San Sebastian and arriving to Lisbon at 7:30 a.m. Other stops on the way mean waking up earlier, e.g. for the Coimbra stop at 4:45 a.m. This train will be reflected in the connections if you search for a schedule departing Lourdes through the Deutsche Bahn link at Looking Up Train Schedules and Routes Online. The closest train station to Fatima is Valado, which requires a connection at Coimbra, if you don't want to go to Lisbon and then back-track. I would prefer to break up the trip with a stay in or around San Sebastian, Spain.

We know of no international car rental without high drop-off fees across these borders, unless you are doing a French car lease program for 3+ weeks.

Stan, One way is usually not a problem in the same country. Neither is driving into other countries. The problem lies in one way international drop off.
You would be renting a French registered car in France, owned by a French company. If you dropped it off in Portugal, the Portuguese rental company cannot rent that car out, they have to get someone to drive it back to France, big cost.

The only other option is either to include some train legs, and rent a second car, or, drive all the way back from Portugal to France.

P.S., if you already have your tickets, where are you flying into and out of?

I just completed a 30-day road trip from Rome to Vienna and back to Rome. I chose to lease a Renault Kangaroo through RenaultUSA.com. The cost was slightly more than a promotional deal I could get through Avis and significantly less than any comparable options from Hertz or any other company that I could find.
I chose to lease the Renault instead of taking advantage of deal via Avis for the following reasons:
1 – Everything (insurance, GPS, all taxes and fees) was included in the lease. I did not have to choose to add options and recalculate the price.
2 – I specified the model of car I wanted. This allowed me to download English language manuals for the GPS and vehicle. Thus, I already had some familiarity with the car when I picked it up.
3 – I would be getting a brand-new car.
I am very pleased with my choice. The process went as smoothly as advertised. I will be using RenaultUSA the next time I plan a European trip of 21 days or more.

A post-trip postscript for anyone still following this thread.

I successfully pulled off the trip using trains, but only after American Airlines graciously agreed to let us change the return flight to extend our trip by two days while waiving the $600 in change fees. It took awhile with their customer support, but the original tour operator provided proof they had cancelled the tour, which helped. Shout out to AA for doing A Good Thing.

We stopped (for a few hours or overnight) at Burgos, Segovia, Madrid, and Salamanca. The cathedrals were magnificent. We were also going to include Avila but had to give that up in order to get another day in Madrid to catch the Prado, which was closed on May 1st when we originally planned to visit. We had a lovely trip.

For those simply trying to get between Lourdes and Fatima, the overnight train from Irun to Lisbon is an excellent way to do it if you don't care about seeing locations in Spain in between. We caught that train in Salamanca (at 1am!) and had a sleeper compartment. All the way from Irun would have been very relaxing.

One slight hitch: the train from Lourdes to Irun is French (SNCF), naturally, while onward from Irun to Burgos was Spanish (renfe). I tried to buy the tickets online through the SNCF website, but it only gave me the Lourdes-Irun ticket. We got to the station with barely time to get onto the train and no time to print the Irun-Burgos ticket at the kiosk (ticket window was closed so no human help). Found out after arriving at Irun that the remaining ticket HAD to be printed in France. We could buy a new ticket there in Spain but the ticket office could not refund the existing one; that took quite a bit of time online and on phone with SNCF but eventually got done (minus their online booking fee). So beware the cross-border ticketing as well as cross-border car rental!

Stan

Stan,

Thanks for the update. For future reference, you may have been able to buy the tickets needed for both Spain and France by using the www.trainline.eu website (which sells tickets for both countries). If the tickets were sent to your phone, there would be no need to print them. Just a thought.....