“You must go to the end of the block and turn left. Then, you must go until you  see a square that is round...” “A square that is round...” I responded in my best 2 a.m. vacant monotone. I nodded my head slowly, like a zombie taking orders from a witchdoctor.  The man sitting behind the hotel night clerk smirked as he realized what his associate had just said. The night clerk didn't miss a beat, “Yes, it will be a square, but it will be round.” “Here in Barcelona, I can see how that might happen.” I commented. We had just arrived at the Hotel Gothica after having spent over three hours lost in the maze of streets and alleys - some ancient, some modern - that wind and criss-cross and sometimes just simply disappear in the magnificent city of Barcelona... Renting a car in Spain, France, or Italy isn't very different than renting a car in the U.S.  You need a driver's license, a credit card (not a debit card), and your passport.  I was never once asked for the international driver's license I had purchased from Triple A.  Make your reservations for a vehicle in advance!  If you don't, you could wind up spending the night with a pile of luggage on the sidewalk in a neighborhood you won't like! The vehicles we rented were smaller -  four door wagons or hatchbacks.  These vehicles were small enough to acquire at a reasonable price (about 60 € per day including insurance),  yet large large enough to accommodate two people and their luggage.  All of the vehicles we rented performed well and without mechanical problems. I drove an Audi A3, a Ford Focus, a Volkswagon, and a Peugeot turbo diesel, all of which performed very well. Fuel prices in southwestern Europe were similar to those in the U.S.  I've heard that fuel prices in parts of Europe are higher than those in the U.S.  But, I didn't notice much of a difference after crunching numbers between gallons and liters, and euros and dollars. There are drastic car rental price differences of several hundred euros per week for crossing national borders in Europe.  I think the rental agencies frown upon you doing this, even if you can afford it.  The reasons they gave seemed to involve rental cars disappearing  across national borders, never to be seen again.  The way to get around this is to cross national borders via the rail system and rent a vehicle in the next country on arrival.  We did this between Barcelona, Spain, and Perpignan, France, and again between Nice and Milan. That brings up another important point.  On days when you need to check out or turn in rental vehicles, allocate an entire day!  Also try to pick up or turn in your vehicle in the morning.  This gives you the rest of the day to negotiate the 'aftermath' of being with out a vehicle.  Especially if you need to also change hotels, or catch a train or bus to another destination.  Try to turn in your vehicle as near as possible to the train or bus station you need to get to.  Like any big city, a mere 3 or 4 kilometers on a map could mean over an hour of one way travel.  Like so many other things, contingency planning and timing are everything.  If you do it right though, you'll be sipping a nice cordial of “Aguardiente” in a lounge somewhere, instead of wondering where you're going to sleep because you missed the last train out. You will need to be able to drive a standard transmission (stick shift) and be able to do it well.  Forget about renting a vehicle with an automatic transmission.  They are unpopular and uncommon in Europe.  At various times I tried to rent a vehicle with an automatic transmission so my fiance, Marilyn, could have a turn at driving.  The people at the car rental agency would  look at me as if I were requesting a lifejacket for a hotel swimming pool.  It is also best to have quite a bit of experience driving in heavy, fast, unpredictable traffic.  The kind of experience you get from driving in other extremely busy, major global city, like Los Angeles or New York City.

Articles on France: France: Le Bout de Monde If you came to visit us for the first time, you might think that our tiny village of Cansal in the Fenouillèdes, surrounded completely by sloping vineyards, is as dead as a dodo. Let me try to convince you why Cansal (c. 90 inhabitants) is never, ever boring. We'll start with Henri, a nicely pot-bellied octogenarian, strong as an ox, who proudly showed me his graveyard harem one day when I met him by chance in the village cemetery. Languedoc: 10 Steps Buying Guide You know those month-by-month guides that are sometimes advertised on TV – they usually have a title like “Creative crochet for your home” and you get a handy ring binder to keep them in? This part of the site gives you a step-by-step, monthly planner to help you buy a home in France (afraid there’s no ring binder, though). Think of it like planning your wedding, or the birth of your first baby: it’s all about counting down to The Big Day. Preparation is key. Articles on Italy: A toehold in sun-kissed, seductive Italy for less than $100,000 Romantic cities. Timeless hill towns. Snowy mountains, idyllic islands, and a rivetingly beautiful coastline—most people realize Italy is a vacationer’s paradise, but owning or renting a home here can cost far less than you probably imagine. Ten Days Under the Tuscan Sun and in the Shade of Umbria It was simple enough to get there from Paris -- EasyJet was easy and cheap...a little more than a one hour flight to Pisa from Orly Airport at 6 a.m. without much ado or hassle for about 100€ round trip. The little Pisa airport was a simple, too. A two-minute shuttle took my daughter and I to our rental car at the Hertz lot -- a bright blue Fiat Panda that seemed to have "we're in Italy" written all over it. The luggage fit perfectly in the trunk and off we went. Articles on Spain: Coming to Spain: Part 2 - As a U.S. citizen living in Spain, I can tell you that people here are just too social and friendly to let a chance at positive interaction pass by because of something as unimportant as someone's nationality.  This might not (actually I'm pretty sure it doesn't) hold true in all other European countries, but then again, you really can't compare Spain to any other country in the E.U. Pamplona: Running of the Bulls - I was 18 years old when I made the decision to take the summer off before entering what I imagined to be four years of incarceration in university, and thus set out in search of an adventure so compelling, it would sustain me through the tedious and interminable life of a student. My inspiration to make the journey stemmed from my father, who as a poet, writer, and avid traveler, had instilled in me a burning desire to explore the vagarious, exotic world of a rover.  The Insider Guide to Living in France  If you want to live in France - get this report!

The best combination of maps seemed to be this: 
• A general country-wide highway map with a scale of 1 : 1 000 000. Use this map for planning trips for over 100 kilometers.
• A city map with a scale of 1 : 12 000 for in-city travel planning.
• A provencial map with a scale of  anywhere between 1 : 250 000 and 1 : 500 000.

We used lodging 20 or 30 kilometers outside of major cities.  This was much better for parking, which is extremely limited.  However, the highway system can be extremely complex and confusing.  So you need a map that shows how outlying areas are connected to one another and to whichever major city you are spending time in.  We spent the first week of our visit to Barcelona without a map of this scale.  A good portion of that week was spent lost in the middle of the night.

We acquired Michelin map number 574 of Cataluña with a scale of 1 : 400 000 which solved the problem, ...mostly.  Even with good maps, navigation, especially in Barcelona, is tricky.  The street names are typically posted on the corners of buildings, above the foliage level, and are impossible to see at night without pulling over and stopping.   However, pulling over and stopping is rarely an option.  There is often little or no 
street parking in the cities we visited.   Using landmarks, such as the statues in the centers of intersections, often proved to
be our best bet for navigation in heavily congested areas.

One or more 'sim' card cell phones are indispensable.  Don't count on you're 'sim' card phone from the U.S. working 'globally' as it is advertised
to.  All sim card cell phones sold in the U.S. are, by law, locked to the network of your service provider.  In some cases, your service provider will be willing to 'unlock' your sim card phone for you making it a truly global phone.  This is perfectly legal and you should waste no time and do it. 
Sim card phones from Europe have no network lock in place.  You simply buy prepaid minutes from any number of places, put the card in the phone, enter an activation code and you're up and running with a local phone number.  Prepaid minutes start out at about 20 euros for one or two hours of talk time. This is invaluable when making logistical arrangements on the go.

Picture this: “I'll stay here with the mountain of luggage while you go and find us a 
taxi.”  Two hours go by.  I can't leave the luggage to go find out what the problem is.  With the cell phones you have communications for problem solving.  Or, you're on your way from Madrid to Barcelona, it's five in the afternoon.  You're admiring some castle on a distant hillside when the realization that you don't have a place to sleep that night and you're vehicle is scheduled for return at 8 a.m. the next morning hits you like a bucket of icewater.  If you have a cell phone you can call that saint-of-a-local-travel-agent you met in Barcelona, and he can probably save the day.  Having sim phones is an ivaluable investment.

Being able to speak at least some of the language for wherever it is you are going is also very helpful.  Marilyn and I both speak enough Spanish to be able to get around. This was extremely helpful for the many times we became lost.  Spanish people are very nice folks who were always eager to help us.  One point of caution though, even if you can speak Spanish, the Spaniards may not see the importance of you getting to wherever it
is you are trying to get to. They occaisionally are very helpful at giving you directions for getting to other places.  Places that, for reasons requiring no explanation, they think it is even more important for you to arrive at.

On thinking about the Spanish, I have to say they are fine drivers who generally follow the rules of the road within reason, as would any other safe driver.  The same goes for the French and the Italians.  If anything, the drivers of southwestern Europe are communicative with others using the road, each with ther own cultural overtones.  For instance, in Spain while traveling in the fast lane at approximately 135 k/hr, we would ocasionally find ourselves blocking someone in a minivan (of course) who found it necessary to push the envelope of speed and safety past 150 k/hr.  These sporting envelope pushers, would give you a few minutes to see if you noticed them and whether or not you were willing to change to the slower right lane.  If you didn't see them, they would ride your bumper and flash their lights.  Fair enough.  I would always move out of the way before it ever got to this.

The French, on the other hand, wasted no time getting right on your bumper, and began flashing their headlights immediately.  They would then speed past, giving you a look as if they wondered how it was you had the audacity to even attempt to use the fast lane.  The Italians, were the most polite high speed envelope pushers we encountered, though.  They would begin flashing their lights several hundred yards back, giving anyone paying attention plenty of time to get out of the way.  They also drove sportier looking sedans which passed us even faster than any of the multitude of minivans we encountered in France and Spain.

Road conditions in Spain, France, and Italy seemed to vary from good to excellent.  We drove on everything from one lane country backroads to freeways, at night, and in the rain.  We never had problems due to road conditions.  Keep plenty of one, two, and five euro coins on hand.  You will need them for the occasional toll road.  Toll prices varied from a few euros to over 18 euros. I tried to go around a toll road one evening. 
It 'mostly' worked.  Two and a half hours after I made my thrifty decision, Marilyn and I were in a landscape of rolling hills covered with warehouses and factories.  We were in a maze of two lane roads interconnected with signless roundabouts, literally going in circles. 

At about 11:30 at night, after three hours of not knowing where we were, I finally came to a three way intersection that had signs on it.  I made an assessment on one of our maps as to where we 'might' be and how we 'might' be able to make it back to our Hotel.  Within an hour we were on a familiar country road that went from Terrassa to Martorell.  We finally knew where we were.

A twenty to thirty minute trip between Barcelona and Sant Esteves Sesrovires had taken nearly four hours because I tried to save less than 3 euros. I looked over at Marilyn.  She looked as exhausted as I felt.
“Well, hey,” I said, “we got out of having to pay that toll, didn't we?”
She was not too amused.

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However, I have been on roundabouts outside of Barcelona, where every exit said 'Barcelona'!  Can you guess how many times I went completely around on some of these roundabouts?  I also had a few encounters with the traffic police in Barcelona.   The first time was when I made an illegal right turn.  There was a sign that said not to do this, which I didn't notice.  Also, I didn't notice that the car behind me was a police 
vehicle, which wasted no time in making me pull over.  After the police officer noticed that I was a tourist he just chuckled a bit and shook his
head.  He didn't speak English.  He pointed back down the street to where I made the illegal right turn and tried to explain to me that I shouldn't do that.  I smiled, nodded, looked surprised, and repeated “lo siento” a few times.  This seemed to be good enough for him, and he told me to move on and to be more careful. 

The other time I had an encounter with a traffic cop was when I stopped in an alley, where I was expecting Marilyn to exit from a hotel after checking out.  There was no place to park!  The 'go around the block in a circle' trick was also a poor option, due to the insanity of how streets are laid out in Barcelona's gothic district.  It was well into our one month stay in Europe at this point, so I had had plenty of time to 
observe how the locals dealt with traffic dilemas. 

I decided a Spanish driver would probably park right in traffic, if he knew he only needed to do it for a few minutes.  So that's what I did. Everyone behind me did what Spanish drivers normally do when someone creates an obstacle in traffic: lay on the horn and start yelling about what an idiot that 'someone' is.  It just so happened that there was a rather tall female traffic officer directing traffic a couple of car lengths ahead of me.  She couldn't help but turn around and notice me due to all of the horns and yelling.  Marilyn appeared in my rearview mirror as she exited the Hotel.  She too was wondering what all the horns and yelling were about.  I saw her stare down the length of traffic to where I waited like a rabbit between a pitbull and a rotweiler.  She broke into a run and was getting into the car at about the same time the traffic officer was bending down to see if I was unconscious, or just what on earth the problem might be.

I don't recommend anyone try what I did next- it never seems to work very well when traveling.  I did the “I'm just a dumb tourist and my brain is also on vacation” routine as I looked into the traffic officer's face imploringly.  I whipped out my best illiterate hick accent and said, “ehstaw biyin yoh voy ama riyoh?”

The traffic officer's face went blank briefly before she lost it completely.  Her hands formed fists and began waving like a hen trying in vain to fly as her back arched and she began screaming, “Amarillo? Amarillo? Everyone knows you can turn right on a yellow flashing light!  You're supposed to know that! It's international! Look at all of these people behind you!  You go on yellow!  It's international! It's international!”
So much for the dumb tourist act.
“Do you want me to go now?”, I asked sheepishly.
“Yes! Yes! Go!” she screamed.
I wasted no time and went.

That was the morning after the night clerk at the Hotel Gothica told me to park my car in the 'square that was round'.  That was also the morning we were supposed to have our vehicle back to the car rental agency by 8 a.m. and didn't.  We also never caught the train to France at 8:30 a.m., which caused us to miss picking up our car that afternoon in Perpignan and making it to Marseille, where we missed the hotel reservation we had booked.

But later that day we found another train that went to Perpignan, where we had a very nice meal, and a very nice bottle of red wine. 
I think it was the best red wine I've ever had.

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