If you didn’t know, I’m a big fan of road trips. Whether it was my family’s annual road trip across the U.S. that took us thousands of miles in two weeks, my road trip through Alaska with a friend when we were 24, or the most recent European road trip Matt and I took through Spain, France, and Andorra this past winter… there’s something special about traveling “slow.” Seeing the world around you rather than flying from point A to point B.
Our European road trip in January was actually my first “proper” road trip in Europe — meaning I rented a car for more than just a day. Over two weeks, we visited seven cities in three countries. And while it was more expensive than flying or taking the train/bus between cities, we enjoyed the freedom the rental car afforded us.
Of course, planning a road trip can be overwhelming, no matter whether you’re close to home or on the other side of the world. So if you’re thinking about your very own European road trip, here are my tips to help make it easier.
1. Choose Your Starting/End Point
Even if you have an idea for where you want to go on your road trip, the first order of business is deciding your starting point for your trip. Usually, this would be a major city along your trip’s route. You’d be more likely to find good flight options for arriving in that city, and there would be plenty of rental cars available.
For example, Barcelona was our start and end point of our road trip. We flew into Barcelona, spent a few days there with family, and then headed back to the airport to pick up our rental car and start our two-week journey. At the end of the trip, since we’d made a circle, we returned the rental car to the airport before flying back home to the U.S.
All smiles in Barcelona
While you don’t have to make your end point the same as your start point, it’s typically a good idea from a cost perspective. Most rental car agencies charge a flat rate for cars that are picked up and returned to the same location. On the other hand, if you pick up and return to a different location, you’ll likely be charged per mile or per kilometer. Also, round-trip flights from the U.S. to Europe are typically cheaper than two one-way flights.
2. Take a Look at Google Maps
Okay, once you have your start and end point set, it’s time to pull up Google Maps, if you haven’t already. Enter your start point on the left. And then take a look at the map to see what’s around. Where could you reasonably drive in the time period you have? Where do you want to go?
This year, I’ve been thinking about my “30 in 30” quest to visit my 30th country while I’m 30 years old. When I saw how close Barcelona is to Andorra — a country I’ve never been to before — I knew I had to include it. So I added Andorra la Vella as my first stop after Barcelona, seeing that it was only about 2 hours and 45 minutes away.
From there, I zoomed out to see what other cities were within driving distance. I’d heard of Toulouse, France, but I’d never been. I did a quick search to see whether it was worth visiting. Oh, but then I learned that Carcassonne — like the game! — was only an hour away from Toulouse, so I added that as a stop first. And so it went, with me looking at cities and adding them as stops as I worked on circling back to Barcelona. It told me that the total driving time was less than 20 hours, which didn’t sound too bad for a two week trip.
Feel free to play around with your cities and your route as much as you want! It’s your trip, so make it yours. It’s all about what you want to do and see.
3. Make a Calendar
Once you’re feeling pretty good about your road trip route, it’s time to start planning your travel. It seems like I always default to making a very rudimentary (but color-coded) calendar to help me get started. In case this is helpful to you, here’s what that looks like:
Using Google Sheets (I’m a Google Drive girl because I can access my account and my documents from any computer, anywhere in the world), I make a simple calendar and start by putting in the information I know. Like our travel days, and the days I knew we would be in Barcelona. Then, I start playing around with the cities I’ve decided I want to visit.
At the same time, I’m doing my own research about how long you need to spend in each place. For example, I learned that you don’t need more than an afternoon in Carcassonne, so I designated that on the calendar.
Here are some other things I kept in mind when planning this road trip:
- Personally, we didn’t want to spend more than about 4ish hours driving on any given day.
- It can be stressful to move around too much, even during a road trip. So we wanted to stay in some places for three nights, instead of just two, because it made us feel more settled. I tried to alternate 3-night and 2-night hotel stays until the very end when we had to focus on getting back to Barcelona.
- The “AM” and “PM” designations I put on the calendar were just a guideline to help me feel like we were getting enough time in each city, but we didn’t always abide by them when we were actually on our trip.
- It made more sense to return the rental car the night before we left Spain, even though it meant going to the airport the night before, dropping it off, and coming back the next morning via metro. It saved us more money on the cost of the rental car, as well as not having to pay for parking at our hotel in Barcelona that night.
As you make your calendar, you may realize that your road trip route was a little too ambitious — or maybe the opposite, and you have time to squeeze some other places in, too! The calendar is all about experimenting to find what will ultimately work best for you.
4. Book Your Hotels
Once you’ve got your calendar set — and approved by any travel companions you may have — the next step is to start booking your hotels or places you’re going to stay.
As you can see from my calendar, I knew what city I was going to be staying in every night of the trip. But just to make it easier for myself, I made an addition just below the calendar to help me track my check in & check out dates, the name of the hotel, and whether I’d completed the booking.
We used either Booking.com or points from our Chase Sapphire Preferred cards* to help us book our hotels for our trip. But one night, we did stay in an Airbnb just so we knew we would have laundry access. When you pack for a three-week trip to Europe in just a carry-on… laundry is an essential. 🙂
*By the way, Chase is doing an unprecedented promo right now (May 2023) for new Chase Sapphire Preferred customers! If you sign up with my link, you’ll get 80,000 bonus points if you spend $4,000 in 3 months. Which is unfortunately not hard to do, lol. But those 80,000 points are worth $1,000 toward travel! I wouldn’t recommend this card to you if I didn’t really mean it.
5. Book the Rental Car
Finally, the last step of planning your road trip is booking your rental car. Luckily, this is probably the easiest step of the whole thing.
You can choose to either book through something like RentalCars.com, or you can book through a specific car rental company. Though RentalCars.com will likely have the best selection of brands you’re used to.
If you’re American and prefer to drive an automatic car, don’t forget to select an automatic car when booking!
Our sweet BMW X1. She was not cheap but she was comfy.
For more about renting a car in Europe, check out my other posts:
Remember: It may not be “cheaper” to rent a car compared to taking planes, trains, and buses through Europe… but you’re certain to have an adventure that is 100% yours.
Those are my best tips for planning your own European road trip! What questions do you have? Or any other thoughts? Let me know in the comments!
-Cathy
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