Good to be home

For those of us who “travel in hope but mainly hopelessly”, you will recognise our experiences with car hire! I look at all the nice pictures of cars listed in the different groups, I persuade my husband to increase our budget and go up a group to get something better, and he always reminds me that the descriptions say “or similar” when they show a car. I always seem to get the worst of the “or similar’ collection and no, it’s not what I would call similar! Invariably the rental company we choose will be the furthest walk in the arrivals hall and the furthest point from the car park. It will be either not staffed at all with a large queue or will have one staff member and a customer who wants every aspect of the insurance form explained in a language that staff member does not speak. The car we are allocated is never in the part of the car park I am directed to, so we are wandering around foreign car parks with a trolley of luggage after a long flight looking for a car in a sea of vehicles that all look exactly the same for miles ahead. This is not the best start to your trip! Once I find ‘my’ car, the previous driver is certain to have been a chain smoker. If the car has (allegedly) been valet-cleaned, that will be a different definition of valet clean from my understanding of those words… and if it’s dark when we collect it, you can be sure we won’t be able to find the light switch or the handbook. I’m sure none of that has ever happened to you, so you will have nothing to add to this page!