Florence Rental Car pickup
 

Our family of four (teen girls 14&amp;13) will be taking the train to Florence after a week in Rome. We'll be renting a car for our weeklong stay in the countryside 20Km from Florence.<BR><BR>In making the rental car reservation through autoeurope I can't seem to figure out which pickup location is best. Considering our luggage (remember: teen girls 14&amp;13), we don't want to make too many transfers. <BR><BR>Can someone guide me on this?

Maybe Autoeurope has a map of locations.<BR>Choice would be closest to the entrance of the road that you need to get to your rental.

I am in the same boat (only I have my mom, husband and two sons (14 and 7). I have looked into Autoeurope and the rental cars offices on &quot;Via Borgo Ognissanti&quot; seem the closest to the train station. I mapped the address and it is around 400 meters from the train station. The others seem farther although you could always catch a cab. <BR>I also heard there is a airport shuttle bus right by the train station if you need to rent from the airport. I am also considering this because it might be easier to drive out of the airport than the city.

If you are heading down toward Siena I would suggest reserving at the office closest to the Florence-Siena Autostrada. One more piece of advice..if you are arriving on a weekend day make certain the office you have arranged pick up through is open on that day. Many of the pick up locations are, in fact, closed on Saturdays or only have limited hours.

Also, taxis are very easy to hail. If you are arriving at the Santa Maria Novella station you simply walk out of the station and turn to your left. You will see the taxi line. We also thought of trying to rent nearest the station however given the limited hours on Saturdays we needed to rent further out of Florence. It was maybe a 7 minute cab ride. It also ended up being far easier to navigate our way to the autostrada from that particular office. I'm sorry but I can't remember the office address.

I am sure Auto europe has an office very close to the train station (make sure to get off at the right one. get off on santa maria novella not florence or firenze)I used Hertz and it was just a few minutes walk from the train station to sign the paperwork and get the car. It was also fairly easy to get out to the autostrada considering I had never driven in Europe and hadn't driven a stick in over 15 years.

to PamSF - do you remember what company you rented from? The only options from Autoeurope are the airport and one other location in Florence (Via Borgo Ognissanti) that are open on Saturday past 4:00pm. A location near the Florence-Siena Autostrada would be ideal - if I were to look, would the location be considered part of the city of Florence? thanks for your help -

To Pamsf,<BR>We'll be heading out of Florence toward Pisa (almost due east). Does that change your advice?

We picked up a car from the Via Borgo Ognissanti location (Avis thru AutoEurope). It was just over the river from the access to the highway making it very easy to get out of the city. The taxi driver had no trouble finding it and with a map from Avis, we had no trouble navigating our way out.

East???<BR>What was I thinking<BR>Is there something that happens to a man's sense of direction when he goes to the other hemisphere??<BR><BR>We're heading West out of Florence toward Pisa.

In answer to some questions: We rented through Avis. We arrived in Florence late in the afternoon and had only one choice of places to pick up the car. My guess is the office on Via Borgo Oggnisanti is the one. It is on the other side of the river from the train station.(we arrived at Santa Maria Novella) Regarding access to the road most proximal to Pisa is something I can't answer. However, I will tell you the folks at Autoeurope can be very helpful on the phone with questions like this. To my memory we were also able to download maps of the various areas with office locations. For general map advice get yourselves a copy of the Italian Touring Club green map for Tuscany of the largest scale. We found this to be the most helpful of all the maps we used. I hope this answers some of the questions. Have wonderful trips everyone!

And yes..this Avis office was easy access to the Florence-Siena autostrada.

Sorry..but I keep thinking of things to tell you. I did check the autoeurope site and the street is Via Borgo Orgnissanti. The office is located in the rear off the street. I would also suggest when renting your car ask them to route the way back to the rental office for return of the car on a map.<BR>The Avis rental office is on a one way street which made exiting Florence quite easy. However on return we ended up in a roundabout trying to find an entrance to the one way street. Had we thought to have them map out return it might have been less of challenge! When we returned the car the Avis office called a cab for return to the rail station. It all seemed to be well orchestrated and went quite smoothly. We rented the compact(one up from the smallest car) and were delightfully surprised with a mercedes wagon!