Malaga to Nice

Can any one give me feeback on what%26#39;s the best yet ecomical way to travel from Malaga to Nice? Train? Self drive? Air-for five adds up quickly! And kindly give me an idea about the difficulty of each choice as well as pluses please? Wehave one week using timeshare near Malaga and another week using timeshare in Cannes...thank you very much for your help. Got the transatlantic tickets and the accommodations covered...this part is teh most challenging to decide...ayudame por favor! Gracias!

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How much time do you have? Checking car travel on http://www.viamichelin.com gives just over 1000 miles and suggests 15 hours (mostly on autoroutes), 87€ in tolls and upwards of 150€ fuel. A catch to this is that you may well be charged a hefty repatriation fee on the hire car. If you have some time between timeshares, you could hire a car in Spain and drive to, say, Collioure in France for a couple of days stay, pick up a French car, then drop the Spanish car back in Spain?

The best site for checking train times is German railways http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en which has about 24 hours and a minimum of 3 changes - there are possibilities with overnight sleepers, but this will add to the expense. Costs need checking on the operators%26#39; websites (sncf or renfe).

Using http://www.skyscanner.net/ for cheap flights in Europe, your best bet apparently is to fly via the UK! The main downside would be that these would be treated as 2 separate flights and there are generally no arrangements (even with the same airline) to put you on a later flight if there are any delays on the first - bit of a gamble if you%26#39;re travelling at peak season. Best fares are booked well in advance, so if it%26#39;s for this summer, it will not be as cheap as you might hope.

If you%26#39;re travelling directly from one location to the next, hire a car and bite the bullet on the repatriation charge!

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Diz:

Thank you so much for the input as I was going that direction...driving to Nice. Yes, I do have, say 2-3 days in between the timeshare.

I am surprised at the cost of intra Eruopean flights...I thought that the fares have gone done a bit due to competition with no frills airlines...guess, I was wrong!

I was looking at a eurotrain pass between Spain and France for 350 USD for 4 days. What are your thoughts?

Nonetheless, thank you very much.

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I just found the direct flights from Malaga to Nice with Air Nostrum (part of Iberia), and the price is certainly a disincentive to flying!

I think a lot of the really cheap flights are for us Northern Europeans flying to the sun, and there are limited numbers at the headline low rates anyway. However, a somewhat off the wall suggestion is to take advantage of this and fly with Ryanair to Dublin (nice city) and have a day or two there, then fly back to Marseilles (mp2) and get a train to Cannes.

Sorry, I can%26#39;t really help with train passes, except to suggest that you find prices on renfe and sncf, for comparison, and also confirm if there are any additional costs for high speed trains or couchettes if you have a pass.

There is a UK website www.seat61.com which is often recommended for help with rail travel (it%26#39;s run by an enthusiast, not a commercial operation, and it%26#39;s generally considered very reliable for non-biased detailed info).

On reflection, driving may well be easiest and Collioure is a lovely town for a stop - just check for the drop off costs.

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Hi petpringles: You%26#39;re getting excellent advice and I agree driving, esp with 5 people, seems the best. Take your time, stop over on route, enjoy!

We fly to US every year and consistently get cheaper fares transatlantic than we can get intra Europe! This has included UK to NY to Puerto Rico and UK to Chicago to Dallas to Austin both using AA. We fly out of Manchester and there are about 8 scheduled companies flying from there to US plus many charters - competition!

Best European cheap fares are similarly on well serviced routes with a number of airlines competing. Even then the seats tend to be sold on a row by row basis from peanuts rising fast to the high prices you are seeing. Fly a route which has only one carrier and you%26#39;ll need a platinum card!

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Thanks guys...this forum is great because people like you. Thanks for pointing me on the right direction. Merci!

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Thanks for saying %26quot;Thanks%26quot;. Not that many do!

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