Doubts about renting a car in Europe often arise at the time of making the decision.
Our last tour of the Netherlands and Belgium started with a rental car in Paris. I’m leaving you with our experience here in case it’s useful to you.
Steps for booking and picking up the car
Travel companions, let’s go back a few days and start at the Montevideo airport where we will take the flight to… Paris, Charles de Gaulle airport and we will rent a car in Europe.
We rented the car for our trip around Europe on the DiscoverCars website, a website where we have already rented cars on our previous trips because we have found very good price offers from different rental companies.
You also have the option of adding Full Cover, deductible protection, and we will talk about all of that throughout the post.
So once we arrived at Charles de Gaulle we only had to find the place to drop off the car we had chosen (or similar depending on the category) that we had booked.
Knowing that the flight landed at 12 noon, we chose 13:00 as the pick-up time, to cover any delays.
Once at the rental agency we presented the reservation voucher, they offered us full insurance which we declined since we had taken out the deductible coverage on the same website.
If you choose deductible coverage at the time of booking, an amount will be blocked when you pick up the car, which is always detailed in the specifications of the chosen car and will be returned to you when you return the car without any damage.
If you return it with one, the rental company will charge the deductible for the repair. At that time, you contact the deductible coverage, submit all the invoices for the expenses that the rental company gives you and they will refund the amount they have charged you. This is how the deductible coverage has worked the times we have had to use it.
So they withheld the excess amount from our credit card until we returned the car in good condition, we gave notice that we would be leaving the country, we paid the extra for that reason that was already detailed on the website.
After signing the contract, we took photos of all the damages that the car already had, no matter how small and although they are always detailed on the form to sign, a way to cover yourself against any error and now we can hit the road!!
Road Trip through the Netherlands and Belgium
Fields with tulips and windmills, small towns and cities awaited us on the tour and the usual eagerness.
Paris would remain as the last destination. We would start with Belgium, Ypres would be the chosen destination, it is 260 kilometers from Paris and we did not know it yet.
Then came the well-known and already visited Bruges, and Ghent, always a delight for the senses.
Then we move on to a new city that we would visit, this one in the Netherlands, Utrecht.
The distances within these countries are made up quickly since there are only a few kilometers separating the cities.
Tips
This time we did the tour with my parents so we needed space in the car. It had 7 seats so we could fold down the back seats and fit all the suitcases in.
This is also a tip, look not only at the price of the car category chosen but also at the comfort depending on the number of passengers and suitcases you carry. As you can see in the pictures, we carried a lot! 4 large suitcases and 4 carry-ons.
We loved Utrecht with its canals. The car allowed us to make a stop very close to Utrecht and before arriving in Amsterdam, at Haar Castle.
One of the advantages of driving is being able to stop without much prior planning, simply by seeing a beautiful place on the way.
We arrived in Amsterdam. When you arrive in large cities the car will be alone in the car park, it is time to look for a good price on them. Ask the hotel if they have parking and the cost or if they have an agreement with one . Usually yes, the latter happens and you get a good discount on it. So don’t forget to ask.
Use an application such as Waze for maps and that marks the maximum speed allowed as well as the speed cameras on the road.
We always try to choose villages also on the route, places like Edam, Zaanse Schans, Volendam, Marken, spend the night in some of them. The charm of these routes is a gift for the senses.
We then arrived in Giethoorn, beautiful, to be able to embark on those canals, to be able to spend the night in it
It was time for a big city again, Brussels was now the stop. We tried to mix in some towns between the big cities so we could get enough rest. Big cities require more physical effort, long walks, and crowds, while in most towns everything is more leisurely and allows you to rest.
As a last stop in Belgium we visited Dinant. Wow! We hadn’t been there and we loved it. We chose to stay somewhere with free parking, which is also sometimes an option in small towns.
The total number of kilometres travelled was 1,800. We took the car out with unlimited mileage so as not to have to think about the established limit.
We end this tour with a few days in Paris.
NOTE: The information in this article is based on our own experience, being totally objective. This article contains affiliate links
