Renting a car and driving in Provence
 

Hello Fellow Travelers! We will be visiting Provence in September, 2018. Our base will be Avignon. We plan on visiting Luberon one day, Isle -sur-la-Sorgue, Gordes, Roussillon, Bonnieux and Lourmarin. Also we would like to visit Arles, Les Baux de Provence and Saint Remy on another day. Im curious if we rent a car and drive, is there a problem parking in these small towns or finding our way? We will also plan on visiting Aix - however, from what I have read, we can take the train from Avignon. Has anyone done the Chefs table at La Mirande? Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

We've visited all the places you plan on visiting. You really don't want to drive through the small hill villages - so there is almost always parking just outside the village. Some have huge parking lots - like Gordes & Roussillon. You may have to drive througgh Bonnieux - but it's no big deal.

Stu Dudley

Aix has 2 RR stations; the TGV one is outside town a few miles

>>TGV one is outside town a few miles<<

17K/10 miles.

Stu Dudley

Both Avignon TGV station and Aix' TGV station yes outside of towns but have coordinated trains or buses into the towns themselves. Book TGVs early for discounted prices and to be sure of getting on as they have mandated seat reservations before boarding - book at www.oui.sncf. If coming from Paris to Avignon-TGV savings can be huge buy early booking. www.seat61.com has loads on booking your own tickets online - general train info - BETS-European Rail Experts and www.ricksteves.com.

Renting a car is the only viable way to see all those places in time you've allowed. Otherwise look into tours from Avignon to them.

You're biting off a whole lot more than I would on the two days you've outlined, unless your plan is just to barrel on through them. It would take me about 4 days, even though I know all those places pretty well, to appreciate all those places. There's no problem "finding your way" in Provence - everything is extremely well signed. Assuming you can read a map or have a decent GPS, there should be no problem. You don't want to try to park in the hill towns, though maybe in September it won't be too bad. Parking lots are outside and you walk in for a lot of them. Traveling by train betwen Avignon and Aix is easy - check out the www.oui.sncf and www.trainline.com sites.

https://www.oui.sncf/bus/trajet/avignon/aix-en-provence

Buses take 2 hours but go city centre to city centre (probably) and are always cheap it seems.

https://www.goeuro.com/buses/avignon/aix_en_provence

Have not taken that bus route but may be more interesting than TGV line avoiding all cities. Train is quicker but not that much if figure in getting out to and in from TGV stations.

Walk-up train fare seems to be about 30 euros - buses at least half that price.

I’ll be doing a similar trip in a few weeks. StCirq, do you prefer to use a car GPS (such as a Garmin) or phone GPS (such as Google Maps)? I spoke with Verizon the other day and their international service will cost me $10 per day, for each 24 hours that it’s activated. I checked Garmin maps and France is $69.99. I’ll also be needing a hard copy map (for big picture and in case the GPS doesn’t work) and was going to order the Michelin map 527.

Use Michelin map 113 for Provence.


Stu Dudley

Laura, I despise GPS, whether in a car or on a phone. I use maps, you know, the old-fashioned paper ones, plus my innate, instinctive internal navigational system, which tells me when I'm going the right way or the wrong way. I cannot imagine paying someone to tell me I'm on the right road or not.

I use a GPS while in France (I don't have one for my car at home) but like StCirq, I don't let it tell me where to go. I use it to tell me where I am - and then I decide where I want to go.



Stu Dudley

I use my iPhone as GPS in France and many other countries including my own. I’m familiar with many areas of Provence but I still like to have GPS. Useful for seeing traffic build ups and alternative routes. But I don’t have the same cost considerations as France is included in my phone tariff. Map reading whilst driving is not a great option for me but I used to do it pre GPS & still do in places my tariff does not include, road signs are very good in France too. Is it worth buying SIM card with data for your trip?

I've driven all over that area a couple times and never used GPS, only real maps. I don't look at the map while driving, you look at it in advance and figure out where you are going and how to get there, and then if you forget or get off track, you pull off the road or look at it during a stop or something. Most of those places and a lot of Provence doesn't need real detailed maps, these main tourist sites are right off major roads. In fact, for a lot of Provence, I just used a Streetwise Provence regional map, but that company went out of business unfortunately. That was their only map I'd seen that wasn't for a specific city. You can buy it on Amazon, but it's now $26 as it's out of print (2013). But that small laminated folding map is really very convenient. If you just want a map as a backup, I bet you could get by just with that one, you can get to all the places you name with it.

Arles is not a small town, it's larger, closer to the size of Aix and Avignon.

Those places you name aren't that tricky to find, and some have D roads going right by them (Isle sur la Sorgue, for example, you don't drive into the very center of the town, at least I didn't, I parked around where D938 intersects with D901 and just walked a little to where the market was. Bonnieux is a drive-through. Roussillon is small but only has a couple streets going through it, I stayed there once in a hotel and used it as a base because it is right at the intersection of a couple D roads. Roussillon has one small lot right at the town center and another one down D169 a bit to the west. I think the large lot Stu mentions is somewhere else, as those aren't large. I think the large one is if you approach from the south. Lourmarin has a main road going through it, I know as I took it when driving from Aix to somewhere in the Luberon, but I didn't stop to do anything there. But it's not that big either.

I don't use GPS but thought you could get it with the car rental. Of course, you have to make sure it speaks a language you understand. I just rented a car from Hertz in Avignon and they charge 79 euro a week for a GPS in the car, and of course, you wouldn't have to buy your own map, so you are ahead by about $70.

Signage is usually really good. I do look at the names of towns/villages between where I start and where I want to go. The road
signs usually note the next few towns and the distance to them. This makes it easier for me.

"they charge 79 euro a week for a GPS in the car"

79€ a week? I'd sell my TomTom Eclipse GPS for half that, plus postage.

In the past 9 trips to the countryside of France and once in Tuscany (covering 5 years), we have always had a GPS which was built in to the dashboard of the car. The GPS had a very large screen - much larger than the Gamin I brought from home to use as a backup on the first 6 visits. Of these 10 cars, I was charged extra for the GPS only 2-3 times. On my upcoming trip to Brittany, an in-dash GPS comes with the price of the rental (doesn't seem like an increase in cost either). Except for this upcoming trip, the other cars have always been automatic transmissions.



Stu Dudley

Thanks everyone for the helpful suggestions!
Donna

If you don't want to purchase a SIM (for an unlocked phone) or a GPS, you can download MAPS.ME and using it without data. Frankly, the maps aren't as good as either a TomTom or Google Map. I believe Google Maps also has a download feature, but I've never used it.

What size car do you get Stu? We've also asked for automatic transmission, mainly for my niece who isn't comfortable with manual. We've been debating about GPS, thought we'd have to rent a Garmin or something similar from the agency. Thanks in advance!

Most were mid sized cars - some were compacts.


Stu Dudley