Paragkash

Sarastro, Policemen should not be a problem as I shall have the legal papers with me.
Yes, you have a valid point about the thieves. They will know that we are tourists and are carrying all the luggage with us.
In that case, we will have to safeguard ourselves.
1. We will have minimum number of sights to be seen en-route our Hotels while long distance travelling.
2. Thieves are more active in big and small cities. Less in villages. My trip is throgh countryside and the only city we shall see will be NICE. We shall be staying in small villages. Shall transfer all the luggage in the Gites when we reach.
3. Only valuables we will be carrying is the camera and our TAB and phones. We shall carry all of them on our body, besides Passport, Cash and cards.This will only minimize the risk, though not fully.

Thanks for the warning.

I had checked similar Lease deals 3 months back and they were not that attractive. I got a rate of around 2000 Euros for a similar deal.

Paragkash

drchris, Golf is a great car and can take 2 bags of 24 inches. It does have a luggage cover or a parcel tray. Which places are you visiting?

Michael

<i>Yes the lease back deals are very good and have been around for a few years now.</i>

Compared to what, for whom and under what circumstances? Any comparison should include current pricing and coverage.

Robert2533

The Renault Dacia Duster is a compact crossover SUV, a little on the cheap side. Not something I'd want to be riding around in for a month. And I doubt seriously that it will have a cover for the luggage compartment.

The Megane Estate Wagon, with its larger trunk space, would be a better choice for touring for 4 people, but hauling around three 24" pieces of luggage will be difficult in any small car.

As far as driving and parking, the roads are not that narrow, unless you're on a country road, but still not a problem in a Megane. One thing you'll find in France is that parking areas are provided in and around the villages, and most are free.

The Megane is also better equipped for highway driving.

Sarastro

<i>As far as driving and parking, the roads are not that narrow</i>

This is correct. The idea of narrow roads is greatly overblown. It might be a concern for anyone driving ´57 Cadillac or a full bed, double cab Ford F-250. Otherwise, the large majority of rental vehicles are easily navigated on any French roadway, even on the Route Napoleon in Provence.

ribeirasacra

If you are in India you can find a local dealer then you can see how a Duster is like. It is called a Renault Duster there.
The platform (is underside/mechanics are the same as a Nissan Juke. But the Juke has less room due to its stupid styling.

Paragkash

ribeirasacra, you are right. Renault Duster and nissan Terrano are the same cars sold in India.
I have driven a duster. It is a mini SUV segment and is quite nice to drive. It may be inexpensive as it comes from the Dacia stable, but Renault has made it a nice package. It does have a cover or a parcel tray over the luggage compartment.

The boot is 475 Lt which is large enough even for 4 bags.
It's good to hear that the roads are not very narrow.
I had traveled by bus from Sorrento to Amalfi and found it very tricky to negotiate. At some places it was a narrow road enough for a bus to pass one way and there were cars coming from opposite direction on a hairpin bend. I was happy to be in a bus.

Just giving an apple to an apple comparison based on my research for last 3 months, so that this thread may help someone travelling to Europe for longer duration.
A Nissan Qashqai- which is slightly smaller with a 1.2 Lt engine and 430 Lt boot- for a 32 days rental(1283 E) with zero deductible insurance (299 E) = 1582 E plus one extra driver (52 E + GPS 330 E- which generally people dont buy)

drchris

Thanks for the reassurance about the hatchbacks having covers for the luggage. But given the information about the roads being easy to navigate with a larger car, perhaps we'll upgrade our rental. We'll be doing a LOT of driving, and even in our car at home that has a lot of leg room (Toyota Avalon), my legs feel "paralyzed" after a long drive, so I imagine it would be worse in a smaller car.

Some of the time we will be able to drop our luggage (two 21- carry-ons and a backpack) where we're staying before seeing the sights but will be stopping along the way in Honfleur, Villandry, Lascaux II, Rocamadour, and Pont du Gard before checking in, so we'll have our luggage in the car. We carry cameras, phones, Kindles, iPads, money, passports, credit cards, etc. on our person but would hate to lose our clothes if those were stolen as I wouldn't want to spend time shopping for new ones.

Paragkash - We are doing a whirlwind tour of France - too much in too little time, I know, and way too many changes in accommodation, but we are recently retired and are trying to see as many countries as we can before our health and money run out! Perhaps we'll find an area we love in France and return someday but we have many other places to explore. We always travel in a very fast-paced way and it works for us. If we want to relax, we go to the beach or take a cruise.

BTW, my father was a Navy aviator and flew to India many times, and one of my brothers has been there several times. Both loved it! Perhaps we'll get to visit some day!

Our itinerary is: Paris- 4 nights (we spent a week there many years ago and only want to hit a few high points); Bayeux - 2 nights - picking up car at CDG, stopping in Honfleur on the way, touring Normandy beaches and seeing Bayeaux tapestry; Mont St Michel - 1 night; Amboise - 2 nights (to see chateau); Sarlat - 2 nights (visiting Lascaux II, Sarlat, and scenic drive to small towns; Carcassonne - 1 night; Arles/St Remy/Les Baux/Avignon/Luberon hill towns - 4 nights (staying near St Remy); Cote d'Azur - 3 nights (staying in Antibes) - visiting Nice, Monaco, Eze); Beaune - 2 nights (visiting Beaune and scenic drive); Colmar - 2 nights; return car to CDG and stay in airport hotel to return home next day.

Sarastro

You don´t need a car. You need Capt Kirk to just beam you from place to place.

annhig

drchris, our technique when parking a hatchback with our luggage in it is to make sure that everything is out of sight in the boot, and then reverse the car up to a wall or tree so that the tailgate cannot be opened. it's not foolproof but it should deter all but the most determined thief.

I have to say that your itinerary seems very busy, with insufficient account taken of how long it takes to get from place to place, check in, check out, find parking etc. etc. etc. Have you checked driving distances? For example, MSM to Amboise is over 3 hours, and Amboise to Sarlat is over 4.

I know from a recent trip we did to Germany which was a series of 2 night stays interspersed with 2-3 hours drives that travelling like that can get very tiring; you are trying to see quite a lot of France in a relatively short space of time.

Sarastro

If you are going to be in Paris for 4 days upon your initial arrival in France, then rent a car, you absolutely do not what to pickup a car at CDG if you are going to Honfleur; unless you just like driving in traffic. It would make a lot more sense to pickup in Paris near the périphérique and head towards Porte d´Auteuil and A13. Alternatively you could pickup near Porte Maillot, head west to A14 then A13 but the tolls are much higher going this direction.

MSM to Amboise is conservatively 4 hours non stop. Amboise to Sarlat is 5 hours non stop. This is not an itinerary I might recommend to anyone, you have far too much time on the road.

annhig

Sarastro - thanks for correcting my driving times, I thought that they looked a bit low, though i usually find google maps quite reliable.

I do think that people underestimate how tiring it is to be on the move even every other day.

drchris

annhig - Thanks for the suggestion about backing the car against a wall or tree. We have tried to book a car elsewhere that CDG but given that my husband wants an automatic, they are very difficult to find.

It IS a busy itinerary but we have done this kind of trip before and it actually works for us, though it may not for others who sleep late, spend time shopping (we don't), and linger over meals (we live in a major international city in which we can eat excellent, authentic food from almost anywhere, so eating is not a high priority for us when we travel, other than a few meals for the experience of eating locally). We rise and get going early, don't take long lunches or dinners except on occasion, manage to check in and out of wherever we are staying quickly, and stay on the move.

For me, travel (as opposed to vacationing) is about experiencing as many new things as possible with the available amount of time and money. Some people have described experiencing everything as a blur when they travel like this, but for me it is exhilarating knowing that everyday I'll have many new experiences. It's like an adrenalin "high" that keeps us going from morning til night. I liken it to taking one of those 3-4 week intensive college courses when an entire semester is covered in a short time. Had we been able to travel more when we were younger, and had we unlimited funds, we could make multiple trips to the same country, but the years are fleeting by, the funds for travel are not unlimited, and there is a long list of places we hope to see. So given the choice of seeing as much as possible in a whirlwind vs not seeing a place of interest at all, I choose the former. By the time I visit a new country, I've done so much research, read so many guidebooks and forum posts, and watched so many youtube videos and travel shows, that I feel pretty familiar with it before I go, and then it is just a matter of seeing it in person (for which there is no substitute).

For this trip, I have a very detailed itinerary with estimated times at each site based on guidebook suggestions and posts I've read, plus travel time figured in based on times from viamichelin.com. I even have 80 pages (so far) of turn-by-turn Michelin maps saved from each lodging and sight to the next. Getting lost could throw us off, of course, but since we're driving, we can choose what to delete from the itinerary. I would MUCH prefer that we be taking trains as we did in Italy and Switzerland but there is too much in France that isn't easily reached by public transportation. I also wish that France weren't such a big country so that we could choose a few hubs and see it all from those, but it IS big. We live in Texas, where everything is a long drive away, so a 3-4 hour drive doesn't seem that long to us. We regularly drive 8-10 hours in a day when we are traveling from state to state. Will we be exhausted when we return home? Certainly! But we'll have amazing memories (and thousands of photos), and since we're retired, we can rest up a bit before we start planning the next trip!

annhig

So given the choice of seeing as much as possible in a whirlwind vs not seeing a place of interest at all, I choose the former.>>

but as you can't see everything, you are already missing out loads of places of interest; in fact by all this moving around, arguably you are seeing fewer places of interest than you are going to see from your car pursuing your highly structured itinerary.

For example, you are devoting 2 nights [about 1 ½ days] to Sarlat, which is a place where you could easily spend a whole week and not run out of things to do. Amboise gets two nights so you can see the chateau, but there are loads of them and you are seeing one. And missing 3 or 4 others that most people would consider as good or better.

I know I won't convince you, but really, where travel is concerned, less is often more.

drchris

My husband (who will doing the driving) added that he does not view the long drives as "wasted time," as he hopes we will be seeing a lot of pretty scenery as we travel from place to place. He experiences that as of equal importance to seeing the towns, museums, churches, and other sights, which are "my thing." Certainly the idea of a "road trip" (when one spends days driving without planning to see much except the scenery) can't be uniquely American, can it?

Sarastro

<i> he hopes we will be seeing a lot of pretty scenery as we travel from place to place. </i>

It will be as fascinating as driving from Lubbock to El Paso.

annhig

well, I'm not sure that I entirely agree with Sarastro that there aren't some French roads that are fun to drive, but you won't have the time to do the sorts of meandering driving itineraries where you can stop and stare, take detours, visit the odd stately home or chateau that you pass, or just stop for a drink at a pretty spot.

on the itinerary that you have set yourselves, you will generally be driving on autoroutes or main roads which are largely very busy [so no looking out of the window for the driver] and not very scenic.

annhig

BTW we did road trips in France [and Italy] years ago, when we didn't book ahead and took our time moving from place to place.

but that isn't the sort of trip that you are planning.

jamikins

I agree that to cover the ground you are trying yo you will need to take autoroutes, which are not scenic at all. They are large stretches of 3 lane cement roads with few views of any type, driving 120km an hour for fairly large tolls, fighting fast moving semi-trucks. Efinitely not my idea of the way to see France.

The scenic roads are generally the smaller roads with way slower speed limits through villages and your current itinerary doesn't allow time to do that.

drchris

Sorry to hear that. We had hoped it would be more like driving through Virginia (our original home), where the highways pass endless miles of scenic beauty. But then we have discovered that there are few places in the world as beautiful as Virginia!