travel advice & savings
 
RAIL PASSES — GUARANTEED LOWEST PRICES at RAILPASS.COM — Click Here
2 replies
Europe car rental
Mon, 03/19/2007 - 23:39
AndreaBil
AndreaBil's profile picture
New Member
New Member
Eurotrip Points: 12
Member: 5723
Joined: 03/15/2007
User offline. Last seen 18 years 8 weeks ago.

Hi people – I’ll be renting a car in Seville, Spain and driving to various places in the southern Spain area (Seville, Cadiz, Granada, Cordoba, Ronda, etc…) and dropping it off in Madrid – anyone have any bad experiences or is there anything that I should be made aware of?  What kind of car do you suggest?  Do you have any suggestions for websites that I can rent the car from?

Thanks so much!!!

AB

Tue, 03/20/2007 - 01:07
#1
oldlady
oldlady's profile picture
Moderator
ModeratorModeratorModeratorModeratorModerator
Eurotrip Points: 19
Member: 778
Joined: 01/03/2007
User offline. Last seen 8 years 42 weeks ago.

This old post should help: 
http://eurotrip.com/forum/tm.aspx?m=112874

Also, this old post with a different subject has some car rental information in it for Spain:  http://eurotrip.com/forum/tm.aspx?m=112478
This quote is from Augustin25 in that post

Quote:
A few things about renting cars in Spain: I’ve typically used http://www.carjet.com because their rates include full insurance, taxes, etc (keep this in mind when comparing other rates you find).  I’m not sure if they’ll work out cheaper than what you find elsewhere in this case, because the minimum rental period they quote for is three days.  You could, of course, return the car after only a day.    Rental car companies in Spain will rent to you with just your U.S. license, but if you’re pulled over and don’t have the international permit the police can ticket you for driving without a license. 
 

Tue, 03/20/2007 - 02:01
#2
Keleti
Keleti's profile picture
Traveler
TravelerTravelerTraveler
Eurotrip Points: 187
Member: 4334
Joined: 01/03/2007
User offline. Last seen 14 years 37 weeks ago.

I drove in Spain last summer. oldlady has offered you links for rental info. I’ll stick to some quick thoughts about driving in Spain. I’d avoid going too far into the cities if you can. We stayed on the outskirts of most cities and took transit in as to avoid traffic and parking issues (cheaper and less frustrating).

We decided to try and stay in the heart of Sevilla one day and drove in – what a headache. It very stressful! I had the route all planned (I was the navigator) and then we ran into construction, taxi lanes, one ways, more construction detours! When we finally got to where we wanted to go – there was no parking in the nearby area!

Getting in and out of the Madrid airport was actually fairly easy, if that is where your drop off is. What we did is planned our entrance into the city as to arrive from the north east side of Madrid, so we didn’t have to navigate through Madrid or around its perimeter and that worked really well.

The type of car to choose will depend on how much you want to pay and how much room you want. We were “upgraded” when we picked up our car and ended up getting a PT Cruiser – I don’t know if we really had a choice. Not to many of those in Spain.  Made finding it in a parking lot easy! Ha! It was nice because it allowed us to keep all our luggage in the trunk and out of sight. Smaller and more compact cars are better for city driving and parking.

I’m not a car person, but if you are going to be doing a lot of driving, having something good on gas, will help your bank account. You’ll want air conditioning, which won’t be good on gas, but you’ll appreciate having it.

If you like to drive fast you’ll enjoy Spain.

Oh! Like France, Spain has tolls for some of its highways. A good map will indicate which roads have tolls. They are typically the highways that will get you somewhere the fastest.

Have fun.
C