Car Hire In Halifax, Sydney and Charlottetown

[lkettle]

Hi all, has anyone had experience of hiring a car in either Halifax, Sydney or Charlottetown any information and advice would be appreciated, eg. nearest to port or recommendations.

 

Looking forward to your responses. David & Lynn

[bunduo]

In Charlottetown, I can personally recommend a gentleman by the name of Billy. He is excellent. He is a local and seems to know everybody on the island. First, we drove around Charlottetown and then we headed north where we went to a mussel farm, Dalvey by the Sea (since he knew the manager, we were able to go into the rooms, etc.), a lobster pound, the oldest structure on the island (still owned by the same family), the oldest church, a bird sanctuary on the red cliffs, the Cavendish beach, and Annes house and grave. Highly enjoyable tour that was supposed to 3 hours but took 4. He only charged us for 3, however. His tours run $50 per hour (that is NOT per person). Billy works for the province during the winter months and for the other six months he runs this tour company. Great guy. Ask for him when you get off the ship. He does not prebook. I told him I would post my experience so mention you read about him on cruise critic.

[MonaCD]

Hi all, has anyone had experience of hiring a car in either Halifax, Sydney or Charlottetown any information and advice would be appreciated, eg. nearest to port or recommendations.

 

Looking forward to your responses. David & Lynn

 

I'm assuming when you say car hire, you are looking for a car which you plan to drive yourself. Here that is known as a car rental.

 

In Charlottetown there are several car rental agencies. There are three that might be a 15 minute walk from the pier but most of them have free pick-up and drop off so no worries. Discount, Budget, Enterprise are all about a kilometer from the pier, that's less then a mile.

 

Here's the google map for pier and car rentals in Charlottetown. http://maps.google.com/maps?f=l&hl=e...7,0.05785&z=14

 

If your're looking to hire a car and driver for a personal tour, check out here http://www.gov.pe.ca/visitorsguide/search/search.php3?thetype=tour

[jefarl]

 

If your're looking to hire a car and driver for a personal tour, check out here http://www.gov.pe.ca/visitorsguide/search/search.php3?thetype=tour

DIDN'T see any car/driver on the list, only tour companies offering group tours... ANy individual taxi/tour operators that anyone can recommend??

[MonaCD]

DIDN'T see any car/driver on the list, only tour companies offering group tours... Any individual taxi/tour operators that anyone can recommend??

 

Some of the companies in the list will do personal tours. A list of taxi companies in Charlottetown can be found here, they don't seem to have websites. http://www.gov.pe.ca/infopei/index.php3?number=11829

 

I can't personally recommend any as I haven't taken any. I worked for a tour company years ago, they still do the double dekker bus tours along with others and they do a good tour but I don't think they do personal tours. A friend of mine works for them and said they hang out at the pier when the ships arrive and usually manage to get a busload. You may be able to find someone at or near the pier when you arrive like "Billy" that Bunduo is recommending.

[lkettle]

Many thanks to all who replied to our post the information will be a great help deciding what options to take.

Thanks Lynn & David;)

[cruzin lady]

Hi all, has anyone had experience of hiring a car in either Halifax, Sydney or Charlottetown any information and advice would be appreciated, eg. nearest to port or recommendations.

 

Looking forward to your responses. David & Lynn

Hi, David and Lynn,

If you are wanting to find taxis and tour guides, I can give you some names of companies for your 3 ports. :) What ship will you be on and when?

Just e-mail me: texascruzinlady@yahoo.com

Cruzin Lady

[Two if by Sea]

Hi all, has anyone had experience of hiring a car in either Halifax, Sydney or Charlottetown any information and advice would be appreciated, eg. nearest to port or recommendations.

 

Looking forward to your responses. David & Lynn

 

Again assuming you're asking about car rental agencies: of those three stops, we rented only in Charlottetown. We rented from Discount, and the people at that agency were really nice. The car was fine, too.

 

They actually went way beyond the call of duty for us, since at the end of the day we realized our daughter had forgotten her sweater in the van they used to bring us back to the pier, and when I called to see if they could mail it to us, they actually hurried out and drove back down to the pier to get it to us before embarkation.

 

Their office isn't very close to the pier but they will come and get you (and bring you back, as I mentioned above). Our one surprise was thinking we could walk to their office, but it turned out they had moved to a more distant location. So when we got to where we thought the office was, there was just a sign with a phone number. Fortunately the gas station next door had a phone we could use, and then Discount came and picked us up from there about 10 minutes later.

 

Driving on P.E.I. was very easy. The maps were clear and signs were plentiful on most roads (there was one place where I wasn't sure which was the main road, but again the map came to our rescue and pointed the most likely way). There was no traffic to speak of, although we were driving on Canada Day so perhaps on a regular workday there is more.