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Saturday 22 April 2017

Vignette in French cities and Holiday for less

The Irish Times of the 15th and 17th April 17 carried two features for travellers.


First of all travel advice correspondent Joan Scales wrote an article "Getting a Clean Air Certificate for France."


She reported that there is a new vignette/sticker for Paris, Lyon and Grenoble. They are first three cities to introduce emissions stickers for all vehicles and there are a lot of cities in France. Twenty two more cities are planning this.


On days when certain cities are at risk of reaching their Euro emissions limit heavy polluting vehicles can be refused entrance based on the "Crit'Air" sticker the vehicle is displaying.


You can apply on line and visit their website here Classifications are based on age of vehicle, there are quite a lot of restrictions for older vehicles.


Presumably rental cars will be issued with these, but no doubt it could affect the hire costs as it another admin detail for them.


Motorists driving without the Crit'Air sticker can be fined on the spot from €68 to €135


It will be interesting to see if other cities in different countries follow this system.


On Easter Bank Holiday Monday Conor Pope's article "How you can holiday for less than all the rest"


21 ways to bag a cheaper time away. No 11 on the list was "Car rental insurance" He said "if you do rent a car, do not take out super collision damage waiver insurance when you are picking it up. It's almost always spectacularly bad value for money and such as a policy could easily set you back as much as €300 for a two week rental." Buy on line first Ireland, UK and other countries here