In mid-August, I wrote about an important new company for renting self-drive boats to Americans wanting to cruise the waterways of Europe. Operated by two British entrepreneurs with long experience in that business, European Boating Holidays will now be offering several hundred "self-skippered" boats for rental in Ireland, Italy, France, Germany and Spain -- an indication of how popular such low-cost do-it-yourself boating has become (these are not the far more expensive, heavily-staffed "hotel boats" that cruise the rivers of Europe and emphasize their gourmet cuisine almost as much as the trip). And I pointed out that a full-time reservations office for EBH was now operating in Lake Placid, New York (tel. 866/606-5278), although they had not yet launched their own website to provide further details and photographs.

The website has just gone up. It's reached at www.europeanboatingholidays.co.uk, and finally you'll be able to obtain a far more complete picture of what it means to "drive" your own boat down the canals and waterways of Europe (cruising speed is slow, and stops are frequently made at quaint villages found alongside the canals). Because self-drive boating is cost-effective and inexpensive, you may want to study the chart of prices for rental of the various boats -- and then decide whether a boating holiday is right for you.

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Labels: cruise, europe