One-way car rental from Marseille to Florence

Hi,

I want to hire a car in Marseille to drive the coastline and drop off in Florence. The one-way fees are exhorbitant. Has anyone got recommendations or know of a rental company that is not riduculous?

Thanks,

NR

|||

If you hire in one country and drop off in another, there will always be a very high relocation fee. Someone has to drive the car from Florence back to France: each country has a separate company even if they have the same name. For example, Hertz France is quite separate from Hertz Italy.

Why not drive to Nice or Menton, drop the car, and take a train to Florence?

But I have to say that the drive from Cannes to Menton does not have much to recommend it. Traffic is heavy and slow, the area is entirely built up, and for some of the way you go past railway lines and light industry. You might to better to take a train all the way.

|||

I did not drive the coastal route. Instead, I drove the other way, from Nice through Gorges du Verdon and eventually into Provence. This is the scenic route.

Regarding rental companies, as mentioned, any time you cross border for a one-way rental, the cost will be impossibly high. You need to drop the car off in France somewhere along the train line to Florence and hop on a train instead.

|||

Especially as a car in Florence itself is a real liability. Terrible traffic and lots of limited traffic zones with big fines. The station at Santa Maria Novella is very central to the town.

|||

If this is simply a direct journey from Marseilles to Florence, to do it much more cheaply go by train.

If you are taking your time and looking at places on the way, and want a car to go to places without public transport access, then drive to Menton (or Monaco or Nice depending on company and its location near to a train station), cross the border by train and hire again in San Remo (unfortunately car hire facilities are very limited in the border town of Ventimiglia).

|||

Hi: We also will be renting a car for a week in Provence and then heading back to Italy. We plan on dropping the car off and taking the train from Nice to Cinque Terre. Any suggestions on the best train route? Thanks!

|||

There is only one train route from Nice to the Cinque Terre: along the coast. You can get times and costs from www.voyages-sncf.com or www.trenitalia.com

|||

-:- Message from TripAdvisor staff -:-

This topic was inactive for 6 months and has been closed to new posts. We hope you'll join the conversation by posting to an open topic or starting a new one.

To review the TripAdvisor Forums Posting Guidelines, please follow this link: http://www.tripadvisor.com/pages/forums_posting_guidelines.html

We remove posts that do not follow our posting guidelines, and we reserve the right to remove any post for any reason.

Removed on: 7:19 pm, October 19, 2009