Sur La Route: Tips for Taking a Road Trip in France (2024)

This is going to be one of my longer posts because I wanted to share some tips for taking a road trip in France (and into Spain.) We learned a plethora of basic information which would have been good to know beforehand, so I thought I'd post it in case it will be helpful for anyone in the future.

1. Renting a car is easy if you can drive a manual. Finding a rental car in Paris is a snap, I logged on to Expedia and did a search of companies + cars around my zip code. Even on short notice, it pulled up about 25 cars that were available nearby. Piece of cake. As long as you can drive a manual. Which I can't. My search only pulled up a single automatic car and the cost of this one was 150% more than all the others. But we went for it and also requested a car with GPS, then ended up with the Mini Cooper from a company called Sixt (they were great to work with.) It was easy to drive, fit the two of us perfectly, and cute to boot. So brush up on your stick shift driving before coming to Europe.

2. Gas stations are a mystery. Over the weeklong trip we stopped to fill up about five times. And I swear that every single gas station had a different payment situation. One where you pumped, then drove your car up to the building to pay. One where you had to pay first. One where you had to pump first but could leave your car parked and go in to pay. One where we couldn't get anything to work then got into a very confusing situation with a the cashier who couldn't understand I was saying "deux" for pump two and "blanc" for white car. It became a guessing game for what hair pulling situation we might get ourselves into when we pulled off to exit for gas.

3. Toll roads will break your bank. After living in Chicago, I'm used to my fair share of toll roads + booths. So no big deal when we got on one outside of Paris and took the ticket from the booth. Until we got to the next booth to pay. It cost us about $90. Yes. Ninety. Dollars. The next one cost around $60. After that we took a few more which cost anywhere from $5 to $20 and the little Mini Coop filled up with dread every time we saw that toll road sign. On some days we reprogrammed the GPS to take us on non-toll roads, so if you can spare the extra travel time avoid them at all costs! Or it'll cost you. A lot.

4. Bring along your own speaker box. Pull out that old school boom box if you have to. Or pack along one like this. We had planned to use iPhones to hook up with the car's Bluetooth system and had even purchased an audiobook to get us through the many hours of traffic. Unfortunately the system didn't work with the operating system of the phones and no matter how Barb tried to rig it up, whatever was playing on the phone could not be heard through the car speakers. Which left us at the mercy of the radio with French house music + that Calvin Harris Summer song being played repeatedly on every station. A nightmare.

5. Make sure your credit card has a chip in it. This is one of my top tips for overall traveling in Europe. Most American cards simply have that magnetic strip which gets swiped but European bank cards have a Smart Chip in the center of them. There are a lot of machines that will only accept the chip cards, including in the metro and train stations in Paris. We also came across a toll booth that wouldn't take cash or the magnetic strip card, chip cards only. Which led to us having to press the help button on the toll box and attempt to speak to a clerk in French. Suffice to say all the cars behind us in line were none too happy.

6. Brush up on French (or Spanish) sign language. Not the kind with your hands but the words that will be on the road signs. I've learned all the important French food words but knowing what a sign is saying about the speed limit probably should've been a higher priority.

7. McDonalds has free wifi. As does KFC in France. If you need to get online to check email, directions, Facebook, all that important stuff, you can make a pit stop at McDonalds. And sometimes to use it you might not even have to leave your car. We may have sat outside a KFC drive through window at midnight just to use their wifi. Like I said, priorities.

My top tip for taking a road trip is to do it! Renting a car and driving was definitely the best way for us to see a lot of France along with a good bit of Spain at our own pace. We could be spontaneous, like our unplanned adventure up into the Pyrenees and down to an important restaurant off the beaten path. So hit the road and enjoy your own Sur la Route adventure! Think of me when you pass by all those McDonalds.