Road trip to Europe - Planning

ronmiel

If you want beautiful scenery but to avoid Swiss charges, have a look at Annecy or the French side of Lake Geneva, Yvoirre is beautiful and you can go across into Switzerland by ferry.

zagfles

Beenie wrote: »

We usually drive around France and that country alone can take 14days.

Drove to Italy a couple of years ago, and that was interesting and different. We passed through Switzerland -only there a couple of hours - but still had to buy their annual car tax certificate. Not sure but seem to recall it was 70 euro (an expensive couple of hours).

As far as budget goes, with road tolls, petrol, food and accommodation, entrance fees and snacks along the way, it will probably cost you £1000 each.

Maybe if they stay in separate rooms in expensive hotels and eat in posh resturants every night! £3k is not much less than we spend (4 of us) on a 2-3 week trip in the peak summer holiday period.

OP is going in March and only for 8-9 days, crossings should be quite cheap, accomodation should be cheap, should be quite easy to get triple rooms for £50 a night or not much more in most places. Can't really see how they'd get through over £300 a day unless they do seriously expensive stuff.

zagfles

hotlatte wrote: »

Thanks everyone for the input so far - how about we fly for outward and return journey which leaves out hassle of driving down south and the tiring journey back upon return. And we hire the car once we get there. Then the question is where do we fly out to France, Germany or elsewhere?

It's an option - just see where you can cheap flights to and if they tie in with where you want to go.

I always find the worst part of the journey back is the UK leg - especially if driving from the south. The traffic in the UK is generally far worse than abroad. This summer about 1500 miles and the only traffic jam was a few miles from home on the M60!! I'd seriously recommend the Rotterdam-Hull route back - it's a great ferry and a nice short drive to Manchester after a good night's sleep...

deva

I know you started looking at road trips but with a week I'd consider flying somewhere like Venice then travelling via trains (you could copy orient express route) . The bonus of this is no parking, hire costs and for some nights you could choose sleeper trains? Michael Portillio did a programme and probably on a book.

brodev

hotlatte wrote: »

Thanks everyone for the input so far - how about we fly for outward and return journey which leaves out hassle of driving down south and the tiring journey back upon return. And we hire the car once we get there. Then the question is where do we fly out to France, Germany or elsewhere?

Most car hire cos. do not allow cross border travel. So, if you fly and hire a car, double check with you car hire. As a frequent driver in Europe I would put at the top of any list of things to take a Sat Nav.

michele-p

Hi, please feel free to read our trip report on the link below, from a road trip we did in September 2012, flying very cheaply to Venice, then hiring a car. Please bear in mind though that ski season goes on until the start of April most years, so a lot of our route may be difficult in March. I'm thinking the Stevios pass in particular, plus Livingo is a ski resport, so prices may be high. We did a lot of mountain driving, but it really was beautiful.

https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=70FADDB0A2F776F0!178&authkey=!AHOpzt5Z2JZQ6bI&ithint=file%2cdocx