Even most of the exotic rentals these days have paddle-shifted semi-auto transmissions.

And you can probably buy a plane ticket overseas and rent a stick shift over there for less than the price of an exotic rental. I've had manual rentals in the UK and Spain. Although even that's not guaranteed. A number of years ago my wife and I had a trip to Israel, where they charge a significant premium to reserve an automatic. I was excited to teach my wife to drive stick, but when I arrived they had "upgraded" me to an automatic.