Barb19

We will be picking up a car at the Madrid airport in May and travelling to San Sebastian (with a stop in Segovia) From there we will be going to the French Pays Basque and onward to La Rochelle, Dordogne, and ending in Toulouse. We once rented a car in Barcelona and dropped it in Perpignan, France and picked up another one at the same location, and dropped it, ultimately, somewhere in France without paying a dropoff fee, but it seems this is not possible on the west coast of Spain and France.

Does anyone have any suggestions or know of a car rental company that might do this? I have tried Hertz, Avis, AutoEurope and economycarrentals.com to no avail.

I know I can drop the car in San Sebastian and pick up another one in Biarritz ( which seems to be the nearest location to the French border. Does anyone know how much a taxi would cost from SS to Biarritz?

Any advice and information would be appreciated.

Barb

kanadajin

I do not have a straight answer, but taxi fare from SS to Biarritz could be high, though the distance is around 45 km - I am assuming that the driver would have to backtrack "empty" i.e. without a paying customer.

I note that Avis has 2 counters in Hendaye (France), on the spanish border, on in town and one at the train station. On the spanish side at Hondarribia/Irun, there appears to be rental counters at their station as well. Taxi fare in that case would be minimal - if you travel really light you might also be able to simply walk across the border?!?

kanadajin

HappyTrvlr

There is also the liitle ferry that crosses the river from Hondarribia to Hendaye, very inexpensive.
We had to hire a driver to take over the border from Portugal to Spain to pick up another rental car. Even though we paid 150E, it was way less than the quoted drop off fee for returning a rental to another ocuntry.

ParisAmsterdam

Looking at Google Maps there is a Europcar office in Irun in Spain and an Avis office in Hendaye across the river
in France.

Perhaps organize a rental from the one in Spain and the other in France? It might be possible to arrange this with AutoEurope if you contact them by phone...

StuDudley

We had the same situation between San Remo in Italy, and Monte Carlo in Monaco (France, really).

We drove the Italian car (from Italy) to Monte Carlo. We rented a French car, transferred our luggage (too many pottery purchases in Italy) to the French car, and then we both drove a car back to San Remo. We returned the Italian car, then back to Nice in France.

Seems like you could do this between 2 close cities in the Basque region - provided there are at least 2 drivers.

Stu Dudley

StuDudley

Forgot to mention something.

We've rented around 30-40 cars in Europe. The only time we have encountered an inter-country drop-off fee was when we picked up a car at the Biarritz airport and returned it elsewhere in France. This was about 7 years ago. There was something "unique/special" about the Biarritz airport rental situation. Beware if you choose to pick up the car in Biarritz.

Stu Dudley

Barb19

Thanks everyone for great advice. Stu, I love your ingenious solution, but we rent a manual car and I can't drive it. (I've tried a billion years ago and I gave up)
The info on Hendaye and Irun got the ball rolling and we have made tentative plans.

As of now, I've rented a car to be picked up in Madrid and returned to San Sebastian. We will then take a taxi to Hendaye and pick up a car and it return it to Toulouse. For some reason (I forget why) Europcar in Irun didn't work out.

Does anybody have any idea of cabfare between San Seb. and Hendaye?

Thanks again for good info.

Michael

<i>San Sebastian is on the Paris-Madrid route, with the TGV connecting us with Paris in under 6 hours, and services to all of Spain's major cities. There are regular local trains from Hendaye, on the French border, 20 km away.</i>

What's wrong with the train?