Car rental in Marseille

[belkin]

This will be our first trip to Europe and we are thinking about renting a car in Marseille and driving to Les Baux, St Remy and Arles. I was wondering how much traffic we could expect.

We would bring a GPS to get around but was wondering just how diificult it might be to drive around over there? Can someone who has been there compare the driving in this area to a place here is the US?

 

I know where we want to go but not sure of the order. Also is it too much to try and do Les Baux, St Remy and Arles on our own? Any suggestions?

[Pearl64]

Hi belkin,

 

When are you going? We are doing a land trip (were supposed to have done a cruise-long long story) and flying into Marseille. We will be spending two weeks wandering around southern France. We are using Avis--seemed to have the best deal--downloaded the French maps onto our Garmin. If you are not going until summer, I can reply as to how the driving went and if the Garmin worked. I also bought some Michelin maps. If you are just going to be there for the day, go to the Michelin website and print out the maps you think you might use. Michelin gives you the speed limit, any cautionary places on the road, the cost for tolls and gad, and the time it will take you to get from one place to another.

 

If you think you might want to rent a car, you can always reserve one and then cancel it later if you decide to do something else. If you want an automatic, it is more expensive plus they may not be available. So sooner to reserve would be better.

 

Pearl

[belkin]

Hi Pearl,

 

We are not going until next year so I have time to figure it all out. We are going on a back to back 27 days long so I have lots of ports to explore.

 

I will check out Avis. The Michelin website sounds really interesting thanks for passing it on. Hope you have a nice trip.

 

Thanks for your help

Mary

[Pamulla]

A few years back, I drove from Nice to St Remy with no problem using a manual (it comes back) trans on the AutoRoute du Soleil. We also went to Grasse, Biot, Mougins, St Paul de Vence, along the Corniche in Monaco and Eze.

Driving is similar to US only thing they have lots of rotaries which you may not be used to but the signage is better than the US (IMHO). The major roads are pretty easy, sometimes the towns can be a little tricky but we avoided large city centers.

For an extended time, I liked having a map along with GPS so you had a general idea what towns you were heading towards. I had some Michelin maps.

Also rented a car off ship in Warburg Germany and rented an english GPS with it. Was very helpful.

[Leadft]

When I look on Avis, there are 5 available pick up locations in Marseille. Do you know which would be best? Thanks!

[Hlitner]

We have spent a lot of time driving in that region (even rented an apartment in St Remy for a few weeks) and the route is very doable on a port day. Our basic rule for renting cars on port days is to drive to our most distant point early in the day and work our way back towards the port. In your case this works quite well as we would suggest driving directly to St Remy in the morning. From St Remy its an easy drive over to Les Baux (an amazing town) and finally stopping in Arles on your way back to Marseille. You might want to do a little research about the local markets that operate on your port day. For example St Remy has a nice market on Wednesdays and Arle's best market day is on Saturday. The weekly markets (they move place to place during the week) usually end by about 1pm so if you can get to a town on market day you want to be there in the morning.

 

As to the other post asking about Avis locations we would probably use the St Charles Train Station (many rental car agencies in this area.

 

Hank