Renting a car in Paris

We are spending 10 days in Paris and planning to rent a car early in the morning and return it late at night for day trips to the following destinations (not consecutive days, we will not keep the car overnight)

- Loire Valley

- Chartres/Giverny

- Reims

Which is the best pick-up location with easiest access to highway, airport or any of the train stations?

We wanted to avoid driving through Paris traffic as much as possible. Thanks for any advice.

|||

I%26#39;m going to discourage your implementing such a strategy for several reasons, not the least of which is that one day car rentals are very expensive and you%26#39;ll spend a good amount of time picking up/dropping off the car each time you want one. This plan will not avoid Paris traffic at all unless you only travel on Sundays.

_____________

Strategy One

1. For Chartes or Giverny take the train. From Montparnasse there are over 30 trains a day to Chartes. There are numerous Saint-Lazare departure daily to Vernon and take a taxi or walk to Giverny

There are also buses to Giverny with Parisvision:

http://en.parisvision.com/

2. Train travel to Reims is often and easy from Paris Est (train station) and can take under an hour.

3. I should discourage anyone traveling to the Loire Valley for 1 day unless he has already visited: Chantilly, Vaux-le-Vicomte, Fontainebleau, and Versailles. The Loire Valley is too far from Paris. Sure people have done it, people have also seen the entire Louvre in 1 hour.

________________

Strategy two

Spend 5-6 days in Paris, then rent a car and spend 4-5 days visiting the sights on your

|||

Thanks for the advice, since we are quite a big group, travelling by train can adds up a lot.

In the end, we have rented a car for 3 consecutive days to go to those location daily and return to Paris at night (we already had apartment booked at Marais).

Car pick-up will be at Gare de Lyon, saw it on the map, it is very close to Peripherique, and just few metro away from our apartment.

Now could someone suggest a parking space near the station? and what is roughly the overnight parking fee in Paris?

|||

Nevermind, did some search and found good list of car park here tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g187147-i14-k26275…

Now just wondering, what will be the parking fee like?

|||

I am not too familiar with where your apartment is. However, ask your apartment to see where a nearby secured parking garage is.

For your day trips, you may have to expect spending lots of time on the road daily and fighting Paris traffic.