Driving in France

You can only legally drive with your American driver's license for one year in France. After that, you must have a French "permis de conduire". Without it you won't be able to have car insurance after the first year.

There are two ways to get a French "permis de conduire" - the easy way and the hard way!

I got my "permis de conduire" the hard way. I had to go to driving school for two months and pass both a written exam and a driving test. It was very stressful and cost about 800 euros!

At least I was able to find an instructor who could speak fairly decent English. It was good that my French was fairly good, though, because there were a few incidences where the instructor totally reversed the meaning of some things. That would have cost me on the exam if I had not realized it! Click here to go to my subscription site, where you'll find the details of