Driving from Florence to Nice to Barcelona

Hello all,

we are (4 adults) planning a trip to Europe and thinking of driving from Florence to Nice (stop at Monte Carlo/ Pisa) and then from Nice to Barcelona (stop at Cannes/ Antibes) at the end of August 2007. the trip itself will take 5 days (2 nights and travel time in Florence) 2 nights and travel time in Nice and arrive in barcelona and hand over the car

couple of questions:

1) is it better do this journey by train and can we do day trips to these places by train?

2) how is the overnight train from Nice to Barcelona - we have been told that this will take around 12 hours with one change

any suggestions with what to cover during this time is greatly appreciated

Thank you

|||

What did you eventually decide? My wife and I are making plans for next summer, when we will travel from Florence and Barcelona. Our bycicle trip ends in Florence and 8 days later our flight home leaves from Barcelona.

Thank you.

|||

Hi --

It would be a very good idea to check out the international drop fees before you get too far down the planning road. It costs a fortune to rent in one country and drop off in another in Europe. The big reason probably is that the rental agencies are privately owned franchises and there is no inexpensive way for them to have their cars repatriated.

|||

Too bad OP didn%26#39;t get any advice, but perhaps did in another forum.

Phoenix, use www.kayak.com to look for car deals. You might also try www.autoeurope.com Use www.viamichelin.com to plan routes and get estimated drive times and costs including tolls. Check out raileurope.com to plan train travel.

|||

Thank you for your suggestions.

|||

You may wish to check out flights to Barcelona by Iberia and Vueling from Nice or by Iberia from Marseille. There is no longer a convenient way to travel overnight by train and it is about 12 hours from Nice by train during the day.

Rail Europe does not have full European train schedules. It is better to use www.trenitalia.it/en/index.htm for journeys within Italy and from Italy into France. This will currently give you times and fares up to December 13 2008.

For journeys from Nice to Barcelona, www.voyages-sncf.com/leisure/fr/launch/home/ will give you times and prices up to December 13. The german website reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en? will show additional journey possibilities (beware the times allowed for connections), which can be priced up in two separate stages on the SNCF site. Note that trains from France can arrive at two different stations: Barcelona Sants and Barcelona Estacion de Franca.

|||

-:- Message from TripAdvisor staff -:-

This topic was inactive for 6 months and has been closed to new posts. We hope you'll join the conversation by posting to an open topic or starting a new one.

To review the TripAdvisor Forums Posting Guidelines, please follow this link: http://www.tripadvisor.com/pages/forums_posting_guidelines.html

We remove posts that do not follow our posting guidelines, and we reserve the right to remove any post for any reason.

Removed on: 1:21 pm, October 14, 2009