For not having reservations in the middle of
summer in Europe, I did remarkably well in finding hotels. Before I left
the US I had photo copied all the hotels, their phone numbers, and their
addresses in the cities that I planned to stay in. I would call
different hotels from the train station or from public telephones.
A few places I would chance my luck and I would show up at the reception
office and most of the time there would still be space available.
Finding hotels depended most importantly on when you arrived (time of
day and season), and which city or town you were in. For example, in
Venice I started walking away from the train station and kept walking
through side streets until I found some hotels. I ended up staying 2
minutes walking distance away from St. Marks Square at the end of July.
Most hotels require your passport for copying down information.
Sometimes they will insist on keeping your passport until you pay.
As with prices for other services, the hotel prices were cheapest in
Greece, southern Italy, and eastern Europe. A nice marble floored, clean
multi roomed hotel on the islands in Greece cost about $30 US dollars.
This price becomes even more affordable if you have someone to share the
cost of lodging.
The most expensive room that I paid for was $80 in Venice and in in
Paris. However, in both cities I was in prime locations. In Venice I was
two minutes walking from St. Marks Square and in Paris, I would walk two
minutes down the street and I would be in front of the Lourve and have
views of the Eiffel Tower and the Arc du Triomphe.
One hotel that I stayed at had the toilet situated right in the middle
of the shower. Every time you took a shower you had to remove all the
toilet paper. Most of the bathrooms in Europe have what they call a
second
toilet called a Bidet. This is used for cleaning your back side
after using the toilet. After seeing the many dirty dusty bidets, it
seems like al lot of these are now left for old time sake and are relicts of
another time.
I did stay in a few hostels. There is nothing quite as satisfying as
getting a private room in a hostel. After being on the road all day and
being tired, I found it a real pain if I had to share a room with 4 to 8
other travelers. It was hard to get to sleep early because people would
stay up chatting. Fortunately I only had to share a room several times.
All of the hostels I stayed in were quite clean. Some were much more
fancy then others. The ones in the country were the ones that were the
cleanest and nicest. The ones in the middle of the large cites were
usually quite crowded and more expensive. For the most part, the hostels
were located on the outskirts of town, and trips into the main part of
town often took a while. The exception to this is in the large cities,
where there are hostels scattered throughout the city.
Some of the hostels are closed to check ins from 10am until 5pm. This
makes it a real pain when traveling. Call ahead to find out when they
are open. A common myth is that hostels require a sleep sack. From
talking to people and from my hostel experience, I did not find this to
be the case. Never once did I need a sleep sack. The hostels would rent
you sheets if you wanted. In the summer, the nights were always so warm that I never
even used sheets. This saved me some money. Some hostels include the
price of sheets with their lodging cost.
Some hostels are listed in the hostelling international book. Others are
privately owned. I had no complaints about the privately owned hostels.
In fact they were usually nicer and they usually had private rooms.
One note about the electricity in Europe; it is a different voltage then
that of North America. This means that you will need to buy a
transformer which converts higher voltage into lower voltage. You can
buy these in the US, especially at travel oriented stores.
Camping is one way to save money on lodging in Europe. There are many
nice campgrounds located around Europe. I visited one near Venice and was
pleasantly surprised to see a nice area. They had a large swimming pool,
an extensive gift shop, and nice facilities for camping. As with
campgrounds in the US, some will be more primitive then others. You can
get international camping permits and camping information by writing to
the following company:
Family Campers and RVers
4804 Transit Road - Building 2
Depew, NY 14043
or you can call them at PHONE NUMBER: 716-668-6242 or visit:
www.fcrv.org
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