UAPremExec, you're right, I was strongly leaning towards renting in Caen, but I wasn't quite sure if there wasn't anything else I didn't consider.

Re: Over there, for better or worse, my mom taught me to drive on a manual. Her view was that I wouldn't be a man if I could only drive an automatic. So long story short, I'm not concerned about a lack of automatics in Caen.

Thanks for the input.