I’m kind of perplexed about how to approach car rentals in Spain. If we were going to Madrid or Barcelona, I would not bother, but we want to venture into the Picos de Europa mountains and it’s not anywhere near trains or population centers. I’m inclined to have a look at Expedia.com as a starting point. Any refinements? I’m also inclined to let myself get soaked for the full 100% insurance package, because I can’t imagine my USA based insurance policy would cover non-US events. Any ideas?
At least they drive on the correct side of the road there! We were thinking about Scotland, but I could not bear driving on the wrong side. I could only see the head-on crashes in my mnid.
I used AutoEurope in England, Scotland, and Italy and it worked well. My regular auto insurance did not cover cars outside of the US, but I think insurance from AutoEurope was mandatory anyway. I don’t recall it being a huge cost, but I took solace knowing if anything happened to the car then I could just walk away and made the rental less stressful. I don’t think I’d want to deal with an incident in a foreign country.
I was also nervous about driving in England, but I had my kids with me and I always had one of them in the front seat helping to make sure I was doing things right. They caught me once trying to turn the wrong way on a divided highway, but that was the only incident I had. Research said that the most dangerous day when driving in the UK is the 3rd or 4th day, because you think you’ve nailed it and let your guard down. I also made a rule for myself that if I had missed a turn or something then don’t have a knee jerk reaction that could result in doing something stupid, but rather just keep going and correct the mistake later. That happened once or twice, but overall was not a big issue. The hardest part was trying to read all of the signs in the roundabouts to decide which way to go. In several roundabouts I had to keep going around until we knew where to go.
Have fun! I would also go to AAA and get an international drivers license.
Ha ha. I did that when I went to Japan. But (at the time, anyway) it was just a card you carry with your regular driver’s license, with some text printed in various languages. Is it really necessary? I have no idea. No one ever asked to see it. I didn’t get one when I went to Germany last year. No one ever asked to see my license there either. Perhaps they should have, since I couldn’t figure out how to shift the car into reverse (finally figured out there’s a sleeve on the gear shift that you have pull while shifting, presumably to keep you from shifting into R instead of 5).
I had a friend get pulled over in Italy once and the cops gave him a hard time for not having an international DL. I don’t think anything bad happened to him, he said it just would have been easier if he had it. He always gets one now and happens to be spending all of March in Spain and will be renting a car a couple of times. I’ve never needed one renting a car though.
I’ve rented cars in Spain twice. The first time was with a company common here like Alamo or Thrifty. Can’t remember that company but it was terrible. I got a ticket in Granada for driving in a no car zone but after I called the police there they waived the ticket and hoped I had a nice stay in Spain. However, the rental car company wanted me to pay them even though the ticket had been waived. Big mess. They put a nasty note on a credit report! So the second time I went I used EuroCar. They were absolutely wonderful. I pointed out a little ding I got in the bumper and they said don’t worry about it,
If I go back again I’ll definitely use a European rental company .
I NEED AN EMBOSSED (raised characters) CREDIT CARD TO RENT A CAR IN SPAIN !!! I have ONE left… my Schwab AMEX. It expires 1/24, I don’t know what’ll do next year if I don’t get an embossed card again and I need one again. What a PITA !!!