We are going to fly into London spend a few days there and then go to France. At this point we are not certain how to get to France. Our travel agent thinks we should take the Eurostar. She also says that renting a car at one of the airports is cheaper. We would not be staying in Paris but plan to travel out to Ypres and Vimy Ridge. What is the cheapest way to rent a car. And if its cheaper at the airport surely it makes more sense to jop a cheap flight from London to France. Help Help!!

I believe your travel agent is misinformed - it is MORE expensive to pick a car up at an airport in my experience, because you pay an added airport tax.<BR><BR>I would compare the price of the Eurostar with some of these cheap inter-Europe flights and find out how muich more expensive it is to pick the car up at the airport. Do a price comparison and then decide which option is for you. Also consider whether you want to drive out of Paris, which some people find daunting.

Yep, it's cheaper to rent offsite than at an airport.

Whether you take plane (cheaper, might not be faster - - depends on where you start in London and which airport the flight departs) or train, you might want to consider Brussels as an alternative to Paris to get to Ypres.<BR><BR>Choices include easyjet (LON-PAR), ryanair (service only by way of Dublin or Edinburgh to Beauvais, a tiny little airport on the NE of Paris - - vaguely in the right direction for Ypres - - or service to Charleroi, about 40 miles south of Brussels), virgin-express.com or brussels-airlines.com (the resurrection of the old Sabena).<BR><BR>Best wishes,<BR><BR>Rex<BR>

I think by far the most economical solution would be to fly from London to Charleroi with Ryanair (and not SN Brussels, which flies to the "real" Brussels airport at Zaventem)and from then on rent a car. Granted, usually it is more expensive to rent a car from the airport, but in this case:<BR>1) Ryanair has special deals with Hertz from Charleroi, so it boils down to a standard rate<BR>2) For some obscure reasons, Ryanair tries to push this London-Charleroi connection, which means 4 or 5 flights a day, and dirt cheap rates, often as low as &pound; 10 or &pound;20 one way. Check them out on www.ryanair.com. Plus it only operates on a one way basis, so if you want, you can come back from Eindhoven in the Netherlands (there would be drop off rental car charges, though)

up, for Alison<BR>

These same good deals from Hertz are available at Beauvais, so Ryanair passengers flying into there might want to check them out there.<BR>

If you do decide to fly into Paris and pick up a car off-site, check easyrentacar.com. A partner (subsidiary?) of easyjet, they rent A-class Mercedes or, in Paris, Smart cars (the cutest things you'll ever see) for about 10-11 euros a day if you advance book.

Alison: We always make the car rental arrangements in advance from North America, phoning the local (Avis, for us) office here at home. That has turned out to always be much cheaper than making rental arrangements in Europe. This year, we ended up paying less for a car for 2 weeks in France (yes, we picked it up at the Nice airport and dropped it off in Paris) than we would have paid renting it for 2 weeks here. Unlimited milage (thank goodness...we put on 3000 km), too. I'd check that out those possibilities before leaving. Carla

topping<BR>

Whatever you do, don't use Hertz.<BR>We rented from them in France and are still fighting about what happened--they did not honor their contract.<BR><BR>Go with AutoEurope or Avis, but NOT Hertz.

This anti-Hertz person sure is persistent. All from one bad experience. And the irony is, Autoeurope might put you with Hertz.<BR>

Hey, Mr. Warning -- Autoeurope doesn't rent cars. It arranges rentals with many agencies. Hertz gets a big percentage of their business. What would you do if you "rented" from your recommended Autoeurope and found out it was w/ Hertz????<BR><BR>

Our Hertz rental in France this April/May went perfectly.<BR><BR>We had a good reason to reserve directly with Hertz instead of through Auto Europe: Hertz was able to rent us a one-way car from Hendaye to Strasbourg, and Auto Europe wouldn't.<BR><BR>We were able to use a discount (NWA frequent flyer program) to get a good rate.<BR>

Well, maybe at least if you rented from AutoEurope and they put your in Hertz and Hertz did not honor their contract, AutoEurope would stand behind you. <BR><BR>The reason I keep posting this is that I don't want others to have to go through the same awful experience that we went through.<BR><BR>I realize you can have bad experiences with any company, but when you do, it seems most of them are willing to compensate in some way. Hertz hasn't been.<BR><BR>I'm just glad we put it on a credit card and are not contesting the bill, so we have some recourse. But I would like to see others avoid this unnecessary annoyance.