one nite in a hotel

[teddymon]

well since im goin to europe with my buddy, we thought it would be pretty sweet if we rented a hotel One of these nites.. just to spoil ourselves.. not sure where though.. any ideas?

[lauren313]

Well... that all depends on which places you're going to!

I rather like the idea of waiting til the last few days of the trip, seeing how much money you have left, and then maybe booking a room for the night before you fly home, so you're well rested for the flight!

[teddymon]

i was thinkin in the bigger cities.. well.. im going clockwise-ish from amsterdam around.. so i will probably be on the end of my trip probably at france.. ? around there... well or i could stay at amsterdam because i am flying out of there

[omisan]

Check the hotel prices at RatesToGo.com (if you're going within a month) or HotelClub.com (if it's more than a month in advance) and see what's the best you can get for your money... Then pick that one. They get some killer last-minute deals. I've used them domestically and my friend has used them for Amsterdam, Scotland, and Paris and has scored some killer places for cheap.

[teddymon]

awesome! thanks for the info...will look into it

[tumblezweedz]

Since you're traveling with a friend, you can also look into hotel chains like Etap and Formule 1 - these are pretty bare bones, but don't cost a lot more than some hostels, when you split the costs, and the Etaps come with the advantage of private bathrooms. The Formule 1s share a bathroom, but are still private rooms (usually an Ikea type bunkbed), which can also make a nice change from dirty, noisy dorms, if you have a string of bad luck. Usually the Formule 1s are around 30 Euro/night, so 15 Euro each isn't much more than a hostel. Etaps are a bit more - say 35 - 40. Drawback, they tend to be in industrial park type areas, but in our experience have been easy to reach by public transit, so not too much of a hardship in that respect.

My parents paid for me to stay two nights in a pension in Liechtenstein, for my birthday, and it was heavenly. If either of you has a birthday during your trip, you might negotiate for a similar perk, if you haven't already maxed out your parents for trip funds.

[teddymon]

haha i just may have maxed out my parents funds.. i was wondering though.. what countries are they located in?

[tumblezweedz]

Etaps and Formule 1s are part of the Accor hotel chain - based in France but spread throughout Europe. We've stayed in various hotels in the chain (it includes Novotel, Ibis, Mercure and a bunch of others as well) in Poland, Austria, Greece and Italy at least. There are no Etaps and Formule 1s in Italy, the cheapest of the chain that we found was an Ibis - we stayed in one in Milan for 75 Euro/night, which is about 200 Euros cheaper than anything else we could find. There are tons of Etaps and Formule 1s in France, we stayed in them in Austria, and I know they're in other countries - if you check out the accor website (google accor hotels) click on each hotel chain and they'll give you a list of locations.

Oh, and another good deal we discovered was in Spain. At travel agencies there you can buy a voucher for 50 Euros, which is good at hotels throughout the country. They can book one for you, and you end up getting a much more expensive room for the money. We need 2 rooms (4 kids'll do that to you), so paid 100 Euros, and ended up in a suite at a 4 star hotel right on top of Chamartin terminal in Madrid, for the night before our flight out. It was almost as big as our flat, and had more bathrooms. We were able to turn in our rental car a day early, and the savings on that paid for the room, with change.

[teddymon]

wow thats sweet