passportsf

We will be spending two days in Paris before heading to the Angers area for a week, then returning to Paris for departure. I really do not want to rent/drive a car in Paris, itself, so can anyone recommend somewhere we can rent a car outside the city, accessible to train, preferably in the direction of Angers?

We will be returning to the Paris area on a Saturday and are considering overnighting in Versailles and touring the Palace that afternoon, then heading to De Gaulle on Sunday morning for our flights home. Is rental car return easy to accomplish at De Gaulle?

Many thanks.

Midnightsun

Understandable that you might want to avoid driving in Paris. We have rented cars to leave Paris on several occasions. It's easier to drive out of Paris than to drive around in Paris, and if you rent in the city and drop off ay DeGaulle, you will avoid the dropoff fee. We have used Hertz and there are several options depending on where in the city you are staying. The Avenue Maine Hertz agency has been within walking distance of hotels where we have stayed, but you might choose another that is closer to the edge of town. Considering how wild it it to transfer between flights at DeGaulle, the car dropoff (in a garage next to the international terminal) is fairly easy. Another consideration (for sightseeing, not car rental) on the way back into Paris from the Loire Valley might be Chartres, although you could spend most of a day there, as we did when coming into Paris from the Loire Valley.

Sarastro

There are those who carry sufficient traffic anxiety so as to suggest that you pay for train tickets to some location outside of Paris and anti-up a 40€ train station auto rental pickup surcharge, all this needless expense just to avoid Paris.

Might I suggest:

1. Arrange for a car rental in Paris from a rental office within easy reach of your hotel. I recommend contacting Autoeurope:
www.autoeurope.com

2. Plan an exit strategy to the Périphérique (the circular road around Paris' arrondissements). Of course it’s too late to do this personally but you can tank Napoleon for having Haussmann construct long, wide avenues for your drive which makes this task much less daunting than it may at first seem.

Tools you may want to help in planning:
www.viamichelin.com
www.mappy.com

a book such as this one:
http://tinyurl.com/cyt82o

3. Orbit on this road until reaching about Porte de Gentilly or Porte d'Italie which is near the entry point for A6, continuing to A10 the road to the Loire Valley.

Driving out of Paris is easy. This is not the same as driving around Paris, something I do not recommend and something few tourists really need to do. If you leave after early morning rush hour (somewhere after 9 am), traffic will be minimal.

Once you have done this, you'll feel a great deal more at ease with Paris and with exploring the whole country in general.

StCirq

Why not just take the train to Angers and arrange for a rental car to get you from there to wherever else you're going in the Loire afterwards?

passportsf

Thanks, very much! The TGV fares to Angers for 5 of us would be about $250 one way, so it seemed like a better use of $250 to apply that to car rental and make the drive, as it will only add a couple of hours, at most, as compared to taking the train and renting in Angers.