A Europe Travel Question

[toast2266]

The background story: Me and 2 other guys land in Paris next weekend to ride bikes in France and Italy for a week. The plan was for a friend who lives in Europe to pick us up in his RV, and we'd travel and sleep in the RV. That plan has fallen through due to Visa issues, so the RV is a no-go. That leaves the 3 of us without transportation or lodging, and not a whole lot of time to get that sorted out.

Anyone have any thoughts on the situation?
Rent a car? SixT appears to have a car that might fit us, but it's expensive.
Rent an RV? Indicampers.com looks to have some viable options that are somewhat affordable.

Noteworthy info:
-there's 3 of us, and we'll have 3 bikes with gear. So any vehicle will need to fit that.

- main destination is the aosta valley in Italy, with various stops to ride on the way there / back.

- we all fly in/ out of Paris.

- none of us has any sort of international endorsement on our driver's licenses. It seems like that may be difficult to get on this short notice. None of us live in a major city. It looks like the international license thing is only necessary in Italy? Maybe we just be careful not to get pulled over?

Any suggestions from the worldly members of the collective would be much appreciated.

[rod9301]

Your driver's license will be fine everywhere.

Sounds like the rv is the way to go.

Hotels will be 100 a night, and a car big enough will be expensive.

The other option is rent a moving van from these guys
https://mobile.ada.fr/

Pretty cheap, you can sleep in it, three ride in front and you have plenty of room for your bikes. And gear.

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[nickwm21]

An International Drivers license is a joke. You show up at a AAA and give them $20 and they give you a piece of paper. I have one, and rented several cars in Europe, and never been asked to see it.


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[Buster Highmen]

Train.

https://www.sncf.com/en
https://www.sbb.ch/en/home.html

So easy, cheaper, more environmental, more exposure to Yurp kulcha. Fuck the car and driving.

Train to Grenoble or Oulx. Ride to Aosta. Oulx is way cool.

Cham will be crowded and more expensive, but you could train there and bus it to Courmayeur and ride Aosta from there.

Or train to Martigny, lots of crash space there, ride St. Bernard to Aosta.

[Benny Profane]

From Rick Steves:

"Passports, Driver's Licenses, and International Driving Permits

Whether you're American or Canadian, your passport and driver's license are all you need in most European countries. However, some countries also require an International Driving Permit (IDP). An IDP is an official translation of your US license (making it easier for the cop to write out a ticket). You can get an IDP at your local American Automobile Association or Canadian Automobile Association office ($20 plus the cost of two passport-type photos — OK to bring your own; doesn't require AAA membership). AAA is authorized by the US State Department to issue permits; avoid scam artists peddling overpriced, fake international licenses.
You may hear contradictory information on exactly where you need an IDP. People who sell them say you should have them almost everywhere. People who rent cars say you need them almost nowhere. People who drive rental cars say the IDP is overrated, but can come in handy as a complement to your passport and driver's license. It's a good idea to get one if you'll be driving in Austria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, or Spain — countries where you're technically required to carry a permit. If all goes well, you'll likely never be asked to show it — but the permit is a must if you end up dealing with the police. That said, I've never been asked to show one."

So, just go down to an AAA office and get one, to feel more comfortable. It takes maybe twenty minutes.
Be aware of speed cameras over there, you will get the ticket in a few months if they nailed you.
I just read that French rental outfits are into scamming Americans (maybe others) with ridiculous charges for almost invisible damage to cars when returned, so do a complere inspection when picking up the car with pictures on your phone (timestamped).


Road or MTB biking?

[sirbumpsalot]

Its gonna be pricey no matter what you do - summer in euope last minute - one option is to find a Biking tour company in France to take the place of your friend and RV. They exist, but yeah it will cost you. HOwever...its gonna cost you anyways...at least this way you take the pain of planning and stress of it all working out from your hands.

[plugboots]

Yup, take the train to a cool mountain town for 3 days, ride around, take train to another cool town, ride around, go home.

[Beaver]

Why do you need an auto for? If you must get to an arbitrary destination the trains are great. But really, a bike, Europe, no itinerary, locate lodging ride to it. Eat great food, drink wine, ride, repeat.

[North]

Trains were pretty easy in Italy when I took my MTB to Val Gardena last November. Most will have a car specifically for carrying bikes, and you'll need to purchase an additional (very cheap) ticket for your bike. I packed very light - 30L pack for 2wks+ of travel, which made train travel much easier.

If you go the train route, budget some extra time for delays, random trains that surprisingly won't take bikes (Austria), etc.

Pro tip that helped me quite a bit after some early guesswork and dice rolling: If your ticket is confusing to you in any way or you forget where your connections are (sometimes it won't say on the ticket) , ask for a full itinerary from the ticket window - it'll show all times and connections.

Predictably, train travel was pretty low key in Italy. Once I popped over the border into Austria it was rules rules rules and much more scowling and exasperation from rail employees.

RE: "Does our plan sound fricked?" I showed up in Italy with no hotels booked and aside from a night 1 bivvy in an apple orchard (which, admittedly sucked) due to a comical amount of bad luck, we had a great time playing fast/loose with bed n Breakfasts and AirBnbs.

[toast2266]

Thanks for the advice, all.

We looked into trains. For 3 of us, tickets pretty quickly exceeded the price of a rental vehicle. That, combined with the hassle of dragging around bikes and gear on trains made that option not particularly attractive. And we're mountain biking, so while riding from the train station to wherever would be rad, we won't really be set up for that on this trip.

Good to know about the IDP. I'll see about the local AAA.

The moving van idea is interesting. I'll look into that.

[redacted user]

I showed up in Italy with no hotels booked and aside from a night 1 bivvy in an apple orchard (which, admittedly sucked)

Gotta be at least 2 Ogdens.

[riser4]

Moving van won't require some additional level of endorsement? Commercial vehicle? And I'd love to see some Benny Hill soundtracked footage of trying to drive one of those though some tiny village. Did you factor in fuel costs when comparing to train?

[m2711c]

If you’re flying into Paris and you don’t have any transportation to Italy, why don’t you just hang out in Paris? Plenty of places to ride your bicycle around in circles in that town. They got pretty countryside there too.

[dunfree]

You know gas is >$5 a gallon and there are toll roads right mr euro jong? Mt. Blanc tunnel alone is $85 return for an RV.

[Foggy_Goggles]

With three people, I don't doubt that car rental is the least expensive route to go. That said, I've rented cars and driven in Europe most of my adult life. It is generally stressful and takes away from the fun of the vacation.

Being able to drink beer, sleep, play cards or just look out the window is the way to go. Take a train to somewhere in the mountains that looks good and take it from there. I haven't looked at all the details but trust me when I say you'll have a good time if you do what Buster says. He really could be a travel agent and tour guide for maggots in Europe.

[toast2266]

With three people, I don't doubt that car rental is the least expensive route to go. That said, I've rented cars and driven in Europe most of my adult life. It is generally stressful and takes away from the fun of the vacation.

Being able to drink beer, sleep, play cards or just look out the window is the way to go. Take a train to somewhere in the mountains that looks good and take it from there. I haven't looked at all the details but trust me when I say you'll have a good time if you do what Buster says. He really could be a travel agent and tour guide for maggots in Europe.

That's a fair point.

We have a rough tally on gas / tolls, so those are factored in. Biggest thing with renting an RV is that we wouldn't have to pay for lodging, which is a significant cost saver. But fitting 3 people + 3 bikes + gear (including bike cases, although we could probably stash those in Paris) might be pretty tight in the rental RV's. And yeah, driving a big RV around the mountains seems... unfun.

We'd kinda written off trains because of the cost, but I'll take another look.

We're semi-flexible on schedule, but we already booked some guides in Aosta for a few days (back when we thought getting / staying there was going to be straightforward), so we're kinda working around that.

[El Chupacabra]

I've gotten the international driving permit from AAA for a couple of overseas trips. Only the rental companies in Ireland and Japan insisted on seeing it when handing over the rental car. YMMV, but if the rental agency wants to see it and you don't have it...

[Timberridge]

Didn't Dexter just rent a car in Europe? Perhaps he'll chime in here.

Sometimes you just wanna go where no train goes.

[Benny Profane]

With three people, I don't doubt that car rental is the least expensive route to go. That said, I've rented cars and driven in Europe most of my adult life. It is generally stressful and takes away from the fun of the vacation.

Being able to drink beer, sleep, play cards or just look out the window is the way to go. Take a train to somewhere in the mountains that looks good and take it from there. I haven't looked at all the details but trust me when I say you'll have a good time if you do what Buster says. He really could be a travel agent and tour guide for maggots in Europe.

Yeah, but there are just a lot of places in Europe that trains don't reach.

[Supermoon]

Bump. This seems like the closest thread to what I'm booking right now. Wife and I are flying into Amsterdam in early April, and the initial thought was to fly from there to Spain, but with schedules, prices, etc, we I think are going to rent a car for a week out of Amsterdam, and roadtrip to Madrid and back. Car rental is less money than two round trip flights with bags, trains aren't really that convenient or any cheaper, and we would both love to see some of Western Europe that we haven't been through.

AMS to Madrid is like 15 hours according to Google, is it fair to say that we could get there in two days? In the US that would be how we'd approach it. Can we reliably plan on finding a hotel in a little town along the way for the night, or do we want to have those places booked in advance? I've never driven in Yurp before, so this would be new.

Anyone who's done this and has route/activity/food recs would be awesome.

[XXX-er]

Its a slightly aged post

I think Benny profane pretty much covered the international DL, I didn't need one in Portugal

IME Bike touring in Yurp is great, they pave everything, so get a Michelin 1-250,000 road map, any of the white roads will be great country roads, the yellow roads will be less country and stay away from the reds

we had to pack everything on the bike so its slow travel you kind of make it across one col to the next town but I seen a group of 5 or 6 riders on nice road bikes with a small van for the sag wagon, so one rider has to sit out every day, the van carried all the camp gear so they probably went at least twice as far in a day, it looked like a pretty good/ cheap way to travel by bike

[liv2ski]

An International Drivers license is a joke. You show up at a AAA and give them $20 and they give you a piece of paper. I have one, and rented several cars in Europe, and never been asked to see it.


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Until you get pulled over by a cop that doesn't speak or read English. Easy enough to get from AAA.

[XXX-er]

I forget how that went with the IDL but I think GF checked ahead and we didnt need one in portugal and they hadn't needed one in Italy but I do think its a good idea

I think you do need the IDL in SE Asia but in Bali it looked alot safer to just get a cab

[Supermoon]

Probably will get the IDL as it’s fairly easy to get and good insurance just in case.

[Buster Highmen]

Bump. This seems like the closest thread to what I'm booking right now. Wife and I are flying into Amsterdam in early April, and the initial thought was to fly from there to Spain, but with schedules, prices, etc, we I think are going to rent a car for a week out of Amsterdam, and roadtrip to Madrid and back. Car rental is less money than two round trip flights with bags, trains aren't really that convenient or any cheaper, and we would both love to see some of Western Europe that we haven't been through.

AMS to Madrid is like 15 hours according to Google, is it fair to say that we could get there in two days? In the US that would be how we'd approach it. Can we reliably plan on finding a hotel in a little town along the way for the night, or do we want to have those places booked in advance? I've never driven in Yurp before, so this would be new.

Anyone who's done this and has route/activity/food recs would be awesome.

In 1997, we rented a car out of Geneva and drove to Briancon and based out of Monetier Les Bains. We skied at a bunch of places along the French/Italian border but did not approach Spain.

Things that stood out are tolls on the autoroutes, the price of gas and the amazing availability of local restaurants and small hotels. Don't speed, lots of cops and stiff fines. For the French part of the driving, the 15 hours in 2 days would be reasonable, but I don't know how the part in Spain would go.

But if you're driving, I'd focus on going the slow route and enjoy the backroads and villages. Along the way are the Dordogne or the Pyrenees.

If Madrid is really the goal and the features along the way are tertiary, fly or train there. I'd think the goals of the trip overrule the cost.