Save Money On Your Rental Car In Europe

TTT 45 - Rental Car
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Meggan: Hey everyone, and welcome back to Travel Tip Tuesday with the Travel Mug Podcast. I'm here as always, with my trusty co-host. Jenn, how are you doing this evening?

Jenn: I am good. How are you, Meggan?

Meggan: I am good. Thank you. This week it's pretty quick, but I wanted to talk about using local transportation in big cities while also saving on your car rental if you have one, especially in Europe.

So for us, when we go to Europe, it's usually a big adventure. Several countries, many towns and cities and like many kilometers put on a rental car. That's usually how we roll is like getting your own car and going.

Jenn: Mm-hmm.

Meggan: Um, And as we know along with everything else, rental cars can be expensive and I just wanted to share the way that we combat some of that cost.

So oftentimes when traveling to Europe, you're coming from outside. So North America, wherever. And most folks land in a larger center, so let's say London or Frankfurt or Amsterdam. Just as a few examples, the way we like to plan our trips is to spend either our first few days or our last few days back in that same city, and oftentimes it is our last few days.

And we do this for several reasons, including the ease of course, of picking up the rental car right from the airport when you arrive. We'd like the comfort of knowing we are back in the city closest to the airport in advance of leaving. Right. That's where I would get some anxieties, like, oh gosh, we have to get back so we're not frantically rushing back on the same day as our return flight.

And it saves us on our rental car costs. So we usually book our rental car well in advance anyway to get the best rate possible. I definitely always recommend it if possible. Now by cutting off two to three days of that rental by dropping it back at the location you picked it up at. Getting local transportation into the big city that you arrived in to spend the last few days really saves us time and money.

Most big European cities are really efficient with local transportation, and a lot of them are even walkable, which honestly is what we usually end up doing. So it's well worth it, and you simply do not need a rental car in a big European city. Now, of course, if you're traveling from city to city, That makes sense, but at the end you simply just don't.

If you have one, it's often inconvenient. You likely won't use it. City driving when you're not familiar with that place can be really stressful.

Jenn: Mm-hmm.

Meggan: And parking is usually super costly. So really, Carving out that time in the beginning end where you just don't have the rental can really save you.

Have you ever done this before, Jenn? Or like what are your thoughts around that?

Jenn: So we don't rent cars often, and I think we've talked about this a bit before, but we usually do like a one day or two day rental or not at all. But on our last trip we did rent a car. But this is, this is the exact approach that I would take.

I like I probably just like instinctually would've done it at the beginning, but I like doing it at the end actually better, I think be because you're back in the city. And like you said, it's easy to, to get off the plane and pick up your car rental already at the airport. Yeah. So that makes sense.

I like that. Yeah, most big cities have, you know, excellent public transportation, so it's pretty convenient. You know, I, I wouldn't recommend doing this in Halifax. But

Meggan: no, and that's actually what I was gonna say to sort of finish things off, is you really also have to determine the length of the airport from the downtown city center as well. So if it's too far, I mean there usually is a bus service though, or something that goes into the city center. We take a cab if it's a short distance, but if it was something longer, we definitely would look for bus or train or whatever the case might be, because again, you don't wanna negate , the savings of the car rental with a really long cab ride.

Jenn: Right.

Meggan: It's not really making a ton of sense either. So yeah, really understand where the airport is in conjunction to where you're going in that city as well. So that is it for this week's travel tip Tuesday. So we hope we've given you some food for thought for your next car rental adventure, and we do of course, appreciate you tuning in.

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So, until next time, we'll talk to you later. Bye

Jenn: bye