Car Rental

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Car rental insurance: do I need it — and what are you actually buying? The counter agent slid the form across and tapped the box. “Super CDW. Twenty-two euros a day. Drops your excess to zero.” She made it sound like a bargain. I’d been standing at that rental desk in Lisbon airport for seven minutes, my bag at my feet and a queue forming behind me, and I hadn’t the faintest idea whether I was already covered, underinsured or about to pay for something I didn’t need. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Renting a scooter or car in Bali: what no one tells you until the checkpoint The first police checkpoint I saw in Canggu was on a Tuesday at 9 in the morning, exactly where the beach road narrows near the rice fields. Two officers, two tourists off their scooters, one conversation that looked uncomfortably long. I didn’t stop. I had my International Driving Permit in my bag and a helmet that actually fit. The couple without theirs paid around 250,000 IDR each — and that was before anyone asked about insurance. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Why a car changes everything in Crete The guy at the Chania counter slid the form across and tapped a line near the bottom. Twenty-two euros a day, he said, and your excess drops to zero. My wife caught my eye. We already had that covered, bought online for a fraction of the price, but he didn’t know that yet, and the small Fiat Panda we’d reserved three weeks earlier for about thirty euros a day was sitting in the lot with a scratch on the rear bumper I was about to photograph. I’ll come back to that scratch, because it nearly cost us a deposit we never should have been on the hook for. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Car Rental in Lisbon: When It Saves You and When It Stings We spent our first afternoon in Lisbon doing exactly what I’m about to tell you not to do: circling Bairro Alto in a rented VW Polo, my wife reading out parking-app prices while I rode the clutch up another cobbled hill. We paid almost 20 euros to leave that car in a garage overnight and never touched it the next day. The car wasn’t the mistake. The timing was, and it’s the one almost everyone makes. ...