A reader has recently send me an admonition, gently scolding my failure to point out that many activities and sights in Europe and elsewhere are free-of-charge to experience. Because it's an important point that shouldn't be overlooked in the responses to this blog (especially his tip on how to find these freebies in the places to which you're traveling), I'm repeating his statement here:

In all your blogs about keeping travel expenses in Europe down, you have forgotten to mention FREE things. There are a lot of free things besides people-watching out there. Use your favorite search engine to look for "free things to do in BLANK" (whatever city you're traveling to). London has a great array of items. For example, we signed up at a website which offers free tickets to concerts, plays, etc., and snagged two tickets to a top concert with top seats. This event turned out to be the highlight of our trip. Museums usually have at least one day a week that's free ... You just need to do a little research before you go, and then ask once you're there.

Labels: budget, europe

A re-positioning cruise -- moving a ship from one continent to another, when seasons change -- is among the great bargains of travel. Because they spend many days simply at sea, such cruises are not entirely popular and are therefore priced at sacrificial rates to fill their cabins. But they are not always as cheap as might first appear, because they sometimes require the outlay of a high airfare to reach the port of embarkation or to fly home from the port of disembarkation.

That's why a recent shift of policy on the part of Online Vacation Center (tel. 800/329-9002; www.onlinevacationcenter.com) is so important . O.V.C. is now including round-trip airfare to and from your home city in the total price of the cruise, providing only that you leave from, and return to, either Miami, New York, Newark or Washington, D.C. Thus, on a re-positioning cruise that starts in Spain and ends in San Juan, it will fly you -- at no extra charge -- to Spain, and later home from San Juan.

And this policy prevails on the high-quality ships of Celebrity Cruises, an cruise line with top amenities and food.

On November 28, 2008, O.V.C. will fly you to Barcelona to board the Celebrity Summit for a 14-night cruise to other ports in Spain, Portugal, and the Canary Islands, then crossing the south Atlantic to St. Maarten, and ending in San Juan, from which you'll be flown home free. The total cost for a balcony-equipped outside cabin: $1,859 per person, including the round-trip air and all airport-to-hotel transfers.

On December 4, 2008, it will fly you to Rome to board the Celebrity Galaxy for a 14-night cruise through the Mediterranean to Morocco, then to the Canary Islands, and then across the south Atlantic to the British Virgin Islands and San Juan, from which you'll be flown home. The total cost for an ocean-view cabin will be $1,569 per person, including round-trip air and all airport-to-hotel transfers. (That's slightly more than $100 a day, including air, which is almost cheaper than living at home).

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Labels: cruise, deals, europe

You may have heard over the weekend about the recent strengthening of the U.S. dollar, but don't break out the champagne. While the rise may be of significance to U.S. exporters whose income is affected by slight shifts in currency rates, the amount of the rise is so small as to have no impact at all on the tourist.

The Euro recently sold for as much as $1.59; it now costs $1.54. The British pound sold as high as $1.99; it now costs $1.97. The Canadian dollar recently sold at par; it now cost 99¢. The dollar recently bought only 102 Japanese yen; it now buys 105.

Measured against the fees and commissions you'll pay to various money changers (and those fees can range, in total, from 5% to 7%), the tiny recent increase in the value of the dollar won't even be noticed by you. It's a terrible time to be using our currency as the basis for international travel, and almost everything has risen sharply in cost. And all those tactics we've been considering for altering your travel habits to reduce the cost, remain as valid -- and necessary -- as ever.

In particular, one tip remains of supreme importance: get your money at ATM machines abroad (which requires that you obtain a four-digit pin number for doing so). If you're lucky, and you're dealing with the right bank, you'll pay a commission of as little as 2% to 3% using many ATMs.

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Labels: europe, money

Riverboat cruises are not the only cost-conscious way to tour Europe in the coming year. In previous posts, I talked about a surge in the rental of small, sleep-aboard, eat-aboard, self-drive ships for sailing the canals and waterways of Europe, which are far more extensive than Europe's rivers. Hundreds of years ago, these waterways were the major arteries of commerce, and they remain almost entirely in good working order today for leisure travel.

In those earlier blog posts, I wrote particularly about a British firm called European Boating Holidays (www.europeanboatingholidays.co.uk), which has recently set up an office in the U.S. to take bookings of self-drive boats stationed on the waterways of France, Italy, Spain, Ireland, Holland, Poland, and elsewhere in both western and eastern Europe. European Boating Holidays is represented in the U.S. firm by the travel public relations firm, Diana M. Orban & Associates, and especially by Diana's husband, Mike Brown. When Mike (whom I know) recently read my paean to riverboating and especially my enthusiastic post about the river stop we made in Strasbourg, France, he wrote to point out that I could also have visited Strasbourg on a self-drive boat rented from European Boating Holidays. His description of a potential trip by self-skippered boat is so interesting that I thought I'd repeat it below. Here's Mike Brown's letter to me:

Value-conscious travelers who like the freedom to set their own itineraries can rent a Locaboat Penichette from European Boating Holidays (EBH) for a week (or longer) independent boating adventure, exploring the Alsatian region and piloting their own personal cruiser right into the heart of Strasbourg on those historic canals, for as little as $365 per person for the full week's accommodations and travel.

From the EBH base at Lutzelbourg, it's an easy cruise through the Alsatian Plain on the Marne-Rhine canal past the scenic town of Saverne and into the heart of Strasbourg. Once in Strasbourg, travelers on an independent boating vacation can take their time to enjoy this wonderful city at their leisure without the constraints of a fixed itinerary. They can even moor their Penichette at the Bassin de l'Hospital for an overnight stay in the city, if they wish. (There is no fixed charge for the overnight mooring, but it is customary to give the association that runs the marina between €10-15 for use of the water, electricity and showers available there; an Internet connection is available for an additional €5.)

Rates for a one-week excursion on a fully-equipped Penichette -- including a complete kitchen with all utensils and tableware, linens, and training by the EBH staff to make even boating neophytes confident captains of their private canal cruisers -- start at less than $1,300 for a two-person boat.

Families and friends traveling together can hire a top-of-the-line Penichette1500FB that accommodates 8 people in four private cabins with separate shower/toilet facilities for each cabin at a weekly rate as low as $4,390, or just $548 per person. For budget-minded family groups, this model can sleep up to 12, bringing the per-person cost to just $365 for the one-week excursion.

You can find more information about this itinerary and the base at Lutzelbourg at the Locaboat website. And you can rent such a boat by contacting European Boating Holidays.

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Labels: deals, europe, river cruise

Evidence continues to accumulate that the most cost-effective means of visiting London, Paris or Rome is to schedule at least a one-week visit there and to stay in an apartment, not a hotel. An example is the current offer by Rentalo.com (one of the several major worldwide apartment rental firms) of one-bedroom apartments in the center of Paris for as little as $134 and $135 a night.

In a 17th century building on the Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau, two blocks from the Louvre and the Seine, a one-bedroom apartment with kitchen and living room features cable TV capable of receiving CNN, and high-speed Internet, for $135 a night (plus a small cleaning fee, if you desire to have a maid come in). Why so cheap? The apartment is in a five flight walk-up, and therefore only for vigorous people, who will be thrilled once upstairs to look out "sur les toits de Paris" ("over the rooftops of Paris"). Your landlord will usually require at least a one-week stay, but has been known to rent in slow periods for as few as four nights.

Elsewhere in Paris, a one-bedroom, one-bath apartment sleeps six (vai a king bed in the bedroom and two double sofa beds in the living room) on a quiet street near the Place de la Republique, a three-minute walk from a metro (subway) and a supermarket. The kitchen here includes a washing machine, dishwasher, iron, microwave, coffeemaker and toaster. And the price is $134 a night, with a three-night minimum.

It can't be sufficiently stressed that the rental of apartments in major European cities is an effective way to cut the cost of your European vacation. In addition to using Rentalo.com for finding these apartments, you can also go to Homeaway.com, to VRBO.com (now owned by Homeaway), to EVRentals.com, Zonder.com, and numerous local rental firms found by accessing information on the city in which they are found.

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Labels: accommodations, apartment rental, europe, london, paris, rome, websites

I don't know Garry's last name, but I do know that his suggestions are usually right on the mark with important advice. Recently, he has advised the use of public camping grounds (and camp facilities) in Europe, and the point he makes is so important that it should be set forth in our main blog and not simply in responses to previous posts. Note, in particular, the listing at the end of his message, of the locations and features of these campsites, most of which supply the cabins or tents in which you live. Here's what he had to say:

>Arthur. In your advice "to radically change your method of traveling in Europe," you make no mention of the Camping Parks. Similar to the US. R.V. Park. It's where half of Europe goes in the Summer.

Read Garry's full post here.

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Labels: camping, europe

The name "Amadeus" appeared on the cocktail napkins, on table settings, on banners hung on deck, in various other places -- and I quite naturally assumed that my Rhine riverboat belonged to the well-known Amadeus Waterways, as I reported in a recent blog. Turns out that the Amadeus Symphony is operated by Lueftner Cruises, and not by Amadeus Waterways (which also has a ship called "Amadeus Symphony") -- you can imagine the kind of litigation such a duplication would have set off in the United States (the Europeans apparently regard the word "Amadeus" as in the public domain, for obvious reasons).

More to the point, the Amadeus Symphony of Lueftner Cruises, an excellent, well-run ship with top cuisine and amenities, has been chartered for the year by Gate 1 Travel of the U.S., and it was their personnel -- three tour guides as good as any I have encountered -- who were in overall charge of the cruise. I should have paid more credit to Gate 1 Travel (www.gate1travel.com) and not even mentioned Amadeus Waterways (another fine company), the last-named firm having nothing to do with the trip I was on. Mea culpa.

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Labels: correction, cruise, europe

In a surprising gamble, Norwegian Cruise Line has just announced that it will station its 2,400-passenger Norwegian Jade in European waters throughout every month of the upcoming winter season (instead of returning the ship to the Caribbean, as would normally be done). From November through March, it will operate 12-day cruises of the western Mediterranean, 14-day cruises of the entire Mediterranean, and 12-day cruises to Morocco and the Canary Islands (the latter being the only area associated with European-vacationing that remains warm in winter).

It's a big step they're taking, and obviously the prices will be low. And you will visit port cities that are happily devoid of tourists in the winter months. I think you may discover a big opportunity when you look up the Norwegian Jade on the websites of the major cruise discounters in the next few weeks, when their rates for that ship's winter cruises are announced.

Go to:

• www.cruisesonly.com


• www.vacationstogo.com


• www.cruisewizard.com


• www.cruisebrothers.com


• www.ncl.com

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Labels: cruise, europe

It wasn't a really substantial trip, my seven recent days on a Rhine riverboat (stopping in six cities and four countries), followed by three nights in Lucerne, Switzerland. But in any overseas setting, you are reminded by actual fresh experience about the basic principles of smart travel, as follows:

1. The various European rail passes are more valuable than ever. From checking the railroad ticket offices, it became obvious to me that the increase in the cost of point-to-point rail tickets in Europe has not been matched by an increase in the cost of the various European rail passes. It's as if the people who market these promotional devices in the U.S. have deliberately slowed their rise in price to keep the trip attractive; people I met were able to hop-scotch all over Switzerland with a Swiss Rail Pass for just a little bit more than we paid for two tickets at a Swiss railroad station. In advance of leaving for Europe, look into the various rail pass possibilities at www.raileurope.com.


2. The ATM is your very best bet for obtaining cash. Over and over, I discovered that I could get a decent rate, and pay no big fee, by using my ATM card at the various ATMs in European cities. By contrast, I was shocked by the fees and poor exchange rates of the various money-changing kiosks -- and especially by those kiosks and counters at airports and train stations. The latter, paying high rents to be near the tourist crowds, give you a lousy number of Euros for your dollars, and then charge an additional 5% (at least) as a fee. Even banks, I discovered, now charge big commissions for changing your money. Don't use them. Go to an ATM, and you'll receive an honest exchange.


3. The European equivalent of our T.S.A. will confiscate the same items that T.S.A. does. In European shopping, you have got to stay sensitive to the security check you will later encounter at the airport. We had friends who deliberately passed up the chance to buy reasonably-priced Swiss Army Knives (as gifts for their friends) at shops in Lucerne in the thought that they could buy them for much less at an airport tax-free shop. Passing through security in the airport for the flight home, and rushing to the area of the tax-free shops, they of course discovered that none of these shops were able to sell Swiss Army Knives (since those knives could no longer be placed in luggage checked aboard). You have got to keep mentally agile on your trips to Europe, you have got to think logically and have eyes in the back of your head.


4. You can enjoy big savings by crossing the Atlantic on a flight making stops en route to your destination. I met person after person who had flown to cities in Europe using frequent flyer mileage not on the carrier whose program they had joined, but on the planes of an "alliance partner" flying out-of-your-way to another European city -- and only then to your desired destination. Thus, people flying to Amsterdam on frequent flyer mileage earned through Continental, would go there at very cheap cost via Dusseldorf on Lufthansa, a "partner" of Continental; this involved a bit of a hassle, but saved big sums. Bear in mind that all the major U.S. airlines -- American, Continental, Delta, Northwest, United -- belong to airline alliances whose other members will honor the frequent flyer mileage programs of the big American carriers (but you are not always told that by the U.S. carrier; you have to raise the subject and insist).


5. All the tried-and-true rules for smart eating continue to bring major savings in today's Europe. Because more and more European hotels include a large buffet breakfast in your room charges -- enough to fill you long past the lunch hour -- it has become smarter than ever to make lunch a picnic meal from ingredients purchased at a grocery. You eat well, cheaply and healthily. Similarly, at low-cost European restaurants, the servings are generally so large that the smart traveler orders an appetizer for themselves, a main course for their companion, and then proceeds to split the plates.

Europe never loses its appeal. As disappointing as the weak U.S. dollar is, a trip to Europe is still memorable beyond measure.

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Labels: airport security, europe, money, tips

I've been peppered with e-mails from readers about the physical properties of the riverboat on which we cruised the entire length of the Rhine. How do they compare with various properties of the more familiar cruise ships?

1. Are the cabins on a European riverboat as large as those on an ocean-going cruise ships? As best I could see, they are exactly the size of a cruise ship cabin, and the bathrooms seemed somewhat larger than those cramped and compact little bathrooms on a cruise ship. In every other respect, the cabins had all the furnishings and amenities of a cruise ship cabin, and indeed the mattresses, feather-blankets and down-filled pillows were superior to those I remember. The cabin also had a large, flat-screen television able to get all the channels of a land-based TV system: we not only received a full-length, English-language movie each night, but also BBC Television, Sky Television, CNN, CNBC, and four other German-language, Dutch-language, or French-language channels.

2. How was the food? Better than on the average, popularly priced cruise ship. It was thoroughly European, and reflected all the glories of the European cuisine and the care and attention that Europeans devote to meals. At a final-night party when the entire crew was paraded before us, we were surprised to discover that the ship had six cooks for its 140 passengers, and all of them were either Dutch or German chefs well accomplished at making all the complementary sauces that Europeans pour over meats and fish. Wine was free and unlimited and good; in fact, the ship apparently picked up supplies of Mosel whites when we took a detour over a stretch of the Mosel river, and that night we all had mild, mid-sweet Mosel wine with our meals. Beer, good European beer, was also available and free at all meals. Breakfast was a giant buffet of endless dishes, including an omelette station at which a member of the crew prepared whatever kind of omelette you desired.

3. How was the staff? Courteous, efficient, and service-oriented as only Europeans could be. Waiters, waitresses, and room stewards were mainly young people from Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, all of them extremely well motivated. Our captain was French (even though the Amadeus Symphony is a German-owned boat), speaking fluent English with a heavy accent; our cruise director, surprisingly, was a young American woman who had left teaching to first become a guide with Collette Tours and then shifted over to Amadeus Waterways when the occasion presented itself. The three staff members from Gate 1 Travel (Roland, Monique and Peter) who supervised the tour aspects of our cruise were, in the case of two of them, Dutch; and the third was from Hungary. They were superb; as professional, personable, and efficient as any I have seen.

4. How was the evening entertainment? On a riverboat, there is almost none -- and I found that refreshing. The entertainment staff consisted of a pianist and a singer, and I never stayed up late enough to hear them. The post-dinner activity mainly consisted of a "port talk" alerting us to the key features of the next-day's port visit. All of this is presented in a large and comfortable lounge also containing a bar, and this is where you relaxed during your few hours on the ship. Apart from meals and sleeping, most of your time was spent ashore, as there is a port visit each day of the cruise. On the rivers of Europe, continually lined with fascinating towns, there is no such thing as a whole day simply at sea -- as there is on ocean cruises.

5. Facilities for children? None. And there were no children. While I don't think they are forbidden, a child would be bored to tears on a river cruise, and I would be surprised to find a family with children taking a European river cruise. The passengers aboard? Overwhelmingly middle-aged -- a few younger people, a few fairly old, but mainly middle-aged. Nevertheless, young people in their 20s and 30s would enjoy these cruises to the same extent as everyone else.

6. Daytime activities? You spend most of the day ashore. And as contrasted with an ocean-going cruise, the ship is never docked in a remote location impossibly far from the town. The ship ties up -- in every instance but one -- at a river location right in the town, within a short walk of the main square. That exception: the day we docked in Speyer, Germany, where buses took us to Heidelberg -- the main point of that day's visit.

7. Shipboard lifeboat drills? None. And though I saw lifebelts in our cabin closet, it was quite obvious that passengers would be expected simply to make their own way to shore if anything untoward happened.

8. Seasickness? None. The ship is always level and one encounters no evidence of motion, even in areas of the Rhine where one spots rapids, like near the rock mountain on which the Loreley apparently lured 17th century river sailors to their doom.

9. Casinos? There are none. But there's an occasional casino ashore in some of the towns visited.

10. Daytime activities for passengers not going ashore? Almost everyone does go ashore. The one or two who stay aboard read in the lounge or their cabin, or stroll about on the top deck, where there is also a wading pool.

All in all, my cruise of the Rhine River was an extremely pleasant and memorable week, showing me an aspect of Europe that I am glad to have seen; and I have gone on at such length about it because of the popularity which these river cruises -- of the Rhine, the Danube, the Elbe, the Seine, the Rhone, the Mosel -- are currently enjoying. They are a cost-effective method of visiting Europe (the chief reason for their popularity) and thus allay the weak-dollar fears of a great many Americans. The amount charged -- $1,499 or $1,699 per person in off-season for a one-week cruise, including round-trip air between the U.S. and Europe -- is a remarkable bargain, for which the tour operator (Gate 1 Travel) and ship line (Amadeus Waterways) are to be commended. As I sat sipping champagne and munching on exquisite hors d'oeuvres during our farewell party, I marveled at the ability of these two companies to maintain such a reasonable level of price for such an extraordinary trip on the Rhine.

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Labels: cruise, europe

From a weeklong cruise on the mighty Rhine, having sampled seven cities in four countries -- Holland (Amsterdam), Germany (Cologne, Cochem, Rudesheim, Heidelberg), France (Strasbourg) and Switzerland (Basel) -- and having marveled at the physical wonders of the "Rhine Gorge" (the Loreley rock, the castles, the fortresses, the wine-producing villages, the almost-vertical vineyards, the locks), we disembarked on Sunday morning in Basel, and immediately took a lightning-like Swiss train to Lucerne, an hour away (for a final three-day stay before returning to the States). And now, in a hotel flanked by the Rigi Mountain, and linked to both broadband and wi-fi, I'm able to resume blogging on my trusty laptop.

It isn't that the towns we visited lacked internet cafes -- even tiny Cochem had one. But the computers at each one of those cafes, as well as those on the ship itself, used European keyboards whose differently-placed keys made a nightmare out of my attempts to touch-type lengthy messages on them. And finding a Wi-Fi location for using my laptop proved difficult; surprisingly, the one Starbucks I visited in Heidelberg had never heard of Wi-Fi; and when you don't have access to a hotel room (many of the hotels are, in fact, Wi-Fi-enabled), which is the condition of a cruise passenger, you aren't able to use your own keyboard and laptop.

The solution for future cruises? One passenger pointed out that if I had a cell phone with Bluetooth capabilities, I could have used that phone to gain access to the Internet. It, in effect, would have provided my laptop with the Wi-Fi I needed. Another pointed out that in Europe, you can rent a device from Vodafone that attaches to your laptop and supplies you with portable internet capabilities, again via telephone technologies. I'd be fascinated to learn whether even other methods are available for going on line from a riverboat, and if readers are aware of them, would be grateful for your comments. But now, back to my daily posts.

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Labels: cruise, europe

When Americans travel to the great capitals of Europe, they frequently find themselves surrounded by masses of tourists, or else in areas that have been so modernized that they resemble large cities of the United States. This doesn't happen on a European river cruise, as I am now learning. You stop in secondary cities, like Cologne or Rüdesheim in Germany, where tourism has only a faint presence, and you pass numerous other smaller towns where life hasn't changed in the past four hundred years.

After traveling for a fair distance along the Rhine, our Amadeus Waterways riverboat with its 140 passengers diverted for a time onto the Mosel River flanked by countless vineyards producing the sweet or semi-sweet Mosel wines. For hours on end we witnessed the viniculture of this German area and the small towns whose inhabitants usually own small parcels of land handed down to them by earlier generations and eke out a modest living -- fiercely defending ownership of their small plots, they rarely sell out to larger wine producers and thus maintain a classic rural atmosphere that has been refreshing to experience.

Our riverboat, celebrating this passage through the Mosel Valley, made sure to serve us Mosel whites at meals, which we drank like water. And on our first morning in the Mosel region, on our way to Cochem, the European-managed riverboat emulated the Mosel tradition by serving us a mid-morning meal -- just two hours after breakfast and prior to lunch -- of white sausages ("weissewurstchen") slathered with the sweet mustard that Mosel River companies also produce.

In Cochem, we visited a 1,000-year-old castle, and walked the streets of a medieval city. We had earlier welcomed on board a German historian who regaled us with a serious, one-hour talk on the recent history of Germany and its current social policies -- one would never witness such an event on the typical ocean cruise.

River cruises are currently a popular option for American travelers, and are found not simply on the Rhine (including the Mosel and Neckar tributaries) and Danube, but in France on the Rhone and Seine; in Russia on the waterways between St. Petersburg and Moscow; and in still other locations. My own cruise was on the moderately-priced Amadeus Waterways (www.amadeuswaterways.com), of which two ships have been chartered for the exclusive use of American visitors over the next two years by Gate 1 Travel (www.gate1travel.com).

Tomorrow, we sail back on the Mosel to the Rhine, and pass through its most picturesque stretch -- an area marked by dozens of castles and by still more hillside vineyards slanting downward to the water of this world-famous river. On ships staffed entirely by Europeans, featuring a classic European cuisine, and determined to present a uniquely European vision, the European river cruise has become a major new method by which Americans pay visits to the Old World.

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Labels: cruise, europe

The cities visited on a European river cruise are never the major capitals (except, perhaps, for the starting or ending cities) but -- in the case of my own Rhine cruise -- historic and well-preserved examples of traditional, mid-sized European life. Few of us used to visit Cologne, Heidelberg or Rudesheim in past years.

There are no casinos on board the European river ships -- and passengers aren't the kind who crave casino life. There are no lip-synched, Las Vegas-style evening shows on the river ships. On my ship, entertainment is by a pianist and singer, and most passengers never hear them, remaining on shore to sample the local nightlife.

There are no bingo games, art auctions, wet t-shirt contests, rock-climbing walls, bowling alleys. There are no children's games (and no children). There is a bar, two computer monitors for e-mail, a tiny shop, an equally tiny fitness room with one treadmill, a beauty parlor. That's it. The ship does not cater to people who rely on outside distractions for their entertainment. Most passengers look forward to the port visits, and attend late evening talks on the next day's stop in the ship's lounge (of which there is one).

On board the river ships, the staff is international -- French, German or Dutch officers, usually younger people from Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria in the middle positions--as on my ship. And although the passenger complement is massively middle-aged, a quarter of them are young people interested in the life and history of Europe.

I share your own sorrow over the drastic drop in the value of the dollar and the group-oriented travels to which we've all been condemned by that decline. And I prefer to overcome the problem by dramatically lowering the category of the accommodations I use for a European visit -- and thus off-setting the poor value of the dollar.

But if you're determined to enjoy all the creature comforts on your travels in Europe, you couldn't do better than on a European river cruise.

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Labels: cruise, europe

At a typical price of $1,699 per person for seven nights, including round-trip airfare from the United States, the all-inclusive European river cruise along the Rhine or the Danube is fast becoming the top travel hit of 2008. My own current cruise of the Rhine, starting in Amsterdam (at the Rhine canal) and going to Cologne, Cochem, Rüdesheim, Heidelberg, Strasbourg and ending in Basel, Switzerland, is sold out with American travelers convinced they have overcome the poor present value of the U.S. dollar.

All the river cruise lines -- Amadeus Waterways, Peter Deilmann, Uniworld and others -- are reporting equally high sales.

Although we passengers have all had to change some dollars into Euros for tips to the riverboat staff, we have otherwise spent very little beyond the basic cost of the cruise and airfare (U.S. east coast to Amsterdam, and from Basel back to the east coast). Our lodgings are in comfortable cabins aboard the ship, and two of our daily meals are a giant buffet breakfast aboard the ship and an equally massive sit-down dinner of near-gourmet level prepared by a surprisingly-accomplished ship chef and his staff. Some of us have not even had the appetite to buy a sandwich lunch on shore.

I will not pretend that seeing Europe in this fashion is a fully satisfying alternative to the kind of trips we used to enjoy when the dollar was king. But the European river cruise has some plus points.

You stop every day, usually for the entire day, in an historic European city in which the river boat ties up very near to the center of town, and not -- as in some ocean cruises -- far out to sea or miles from the city. Although the riverboat tries hard to sell you optional land excursions by motorcoach, and many passengers buy them, I've had no difficulty simply wandering into the center of town just a short walk away. And there I've passed the day in more or less the same way as in earlier years.

Unlike an ocean cruise aboard one of those new, 3,000-passenger sea monsters, the river cruiseships do not inundate the cities at which they stop. The typical rivership carries 140 passengers -- scarcely ever more than that -- and its presence in town is scarcely noticed by inhabitants.

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Labels: cruise, europe

You can stay at a working European farm for far less than the cost of a hotel. It's called Agritourism, and it's a booming part of the European scene that is, sadly, seldom used by Americans. For as little as $30 to $70, two persons can get a comfortably rustic room in the farmhouse itself or in a converted outbuilding. Breakfast -- of the heartiest, freshest farmers' variety -- is almost always included, and you can often get inexpensive, rib-sticking dinners as well.

Some agritourisms invite guests to try their hand at agriculture -- a highlight of my (then five-year-old) granddaughter Veronica's farm-stay trip to Ireland a few years ago was getting to gather the eggs from the chicken coop each morning.
While there are only a few central sources of agriturismi, the website of the European Federation for Farm and Village Tourism (www.eurogites.com) links to about 20 official agritourism organizations around Europe, and the independent website BeyondHotels.Net (www.beyondhotels.net) has a section on agritourism with more than 50 links to resources in various European countries. Among these are: www.bienvenue-a-la-ferme.com (France); www.irishfarmholidays.com (Ireland); www.terranostra.it, www.turismoverde.it, and www.agriturist.it (all Italy); and www.farmstayuk.co.uk (the United Kingdom).

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Labels: accommodations, europe

Some U.S. families regard the self-drive automobile tour, staying in highway motels, as an excellent way to see the country. Surprisingly enough, a great many Europeans feel the same way about their highways and motels. At strategic Autobahn and autostrada exits across Europe are modern roadside motels waiting to welcome them with standardized comforts, few frills, and rock-bottom rates: €29 to €75 for a double room.

I've written before about Travelodge (www.travelodge.co.uk), a British chain of 330 motels where Web sales can bring the price of a double room as low as £19, but that is far from the only motel chain operating in Europe. Travelodge's rival Premiere Inn (www.premierinn.com) boasts 500 hotels in the U.K. and Ireland -- and there are motels beyond the British Isles, from Berlin to Budapest.

Accor, the vast French-owned hotel group, may be more famous for its higher-end hotel brands Novotel and Sofitel (and, in the United States, Red Roof Inn and Motel 6), but at the other end of the lodging spectrum it runs the famously basic Formule 1 (www.hotelformule1.com), a chain of 380 motels in 14 European countries. These utterly bare-bones motels are fully automated (aside from a few hours each morning and evening), the "receptionist" consisting of an ATM-like machine you use to check yourself in.

One step up in the Accor family is Etap (369 motels in 11 countries; www.etaphotel.com), with a live receptionist all day, rooms with a double bed and a lofted bunk for a child, and an included breakfast buffet (breakfast at Formule 1 costs an extra €3.90).

Another French lodging includes the motel-like brands of Campanile (more than 300 properties in nine countries; www.campanile.com) and Kyriad (200 motels, all in France; www.kyriad.com). Europe even boasts familiar roadside signs for such American chains as Holiday Inn Express (www.hiexpress.com) and Days Inn (www.daysinn.com), where rates start around €55 to €75 for roadside properties, rising to €130 to €210 for hotels closer in to city centers.

This brings up an important point. European motels are increasingly no longer limited to highway interchanges, airport approaches, and ring roads. A surprising number of these bland but reliable chains are opening up along the outskirts of, and sometimes even within, the historic city centers of Europe's major cities.

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Labels: accommodations, budget, europe

Most travelers who haven't peeked into a hostel in 10 or 15 years probably harbor a lingering image of the "youth hostels" of yesteryear: dreary institutional structures featuring cavernous dorm rooms of 50 or more beds, ridiculously early curfews, mid-day lockout periods, and lamentable locations on the outskirts of town.

The good news is that hostels have dropped the "youth" requirement and are now used by everyone from traveling families with young children to peripatetic grandparents on quirky retirement trips. Though you still get a bunk in a shared room, most of those rooms now average four to six beds each; a few are doubles and triples; and many have bathrooms "en suite" (meaning private baths) rather than down the hall. Prices average around €15 to €20 per bed, a bit more for a private room sleeping 2-3.

In addition to the older hostels affiliated with Hostelling International, most European cities also now feature a score of private hostels, often with excellent locations in the historic center or near the rail stations, frequently with laundry rooms, cheap (or free) Internet stations, dining rooms and in-house pubs or discos, and few, if any, of those old school-marm rules (which do, unfortunately, survive at most HI-affiliated hostels).

However, be warned that even if they have dropped "youth" from the name, hostels still tend to draw a youthful backpacker crowd, which means a convivial atmosphere that can often verge on one big party -- wonderful if that's what you came for, not so great if you expected to get any sleep before the thumping beat from the basement disco ceases at 3am.

There is an official HI site (www.hihostels.com), but if you want to peruse private hostels alongside HI-affiliated ones you'll find far better resources at the independent sites www.hostels.com, www.hostels.net, www.hostelbookers.com, and www.europehostels.org, which includes a primer on hostel travel and direct links to hostelling sites in 34 European countries.

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Labels: accommodations, europe, hostels

This past week, the British pound briefly touched a level of $2.05 to the U.S. dollar -- which means that you actually pay about $2.15 per pound by the time you factor in fees and commissions to various money-changers. The Euro has soared to $1.56 -- and is predicted to go higher. If you're to enjoy an affordable trans-Atlantic trip this summer, you have got to start thinking about alternative accommodations costing far less than hotels or even guesthouses.

I'll start with university accommodations. And then, in a subsequent post, I'll deal once again -- but more comprehensively than before -- with those greatly-misunderstood "youth hostels".

The campus digs, first. Nearly all universities in Europe throw open their (temporarily unoccupied) student housing to the general public (of all ages) when school is out, which can vary from late May or early June through late August or early September.

Though you can sometimes get deals as good as $150 for a full week, usually a university room in a major city like London costs between $24 and $60 a night. (The higher the price on that scale, the more likely the room with have a private bath rather than a shared one down the hall.) Your neighbors will likely be a mix of other savvy travelers, students sticking around for summer courses, and overseas visitors participating in summer study programs.

The best way to find campus housing open to tourists is to go directly to the tourist authority of a given country or city. For example, at the official tourism site Visit Britain (www.visitbritain.us) you can search the accommodations database under the category "budget and student" and find, alongside a dozen hostels, eight campus housing options in London alone. You can find links to official tourist office sites at www.worldtourismdirectory.com.

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Labels: accommodations, europe

I hear it from many tour operators and from marketing companies that represent tour operators and airlines: there appears a definite slowdown in advance bookings for Europe. How could it be otherwise? Millions of Americans returned from their trans-Atlantic trips in 2007 with lurid tales of the costs they incurred in paying with a devalued U.S. dollar. When the British pound costs $2 and the Euro sells for $1.50, the prices at European hotels, restaurants and shops have got to be discouraging and disappointing. More and more Americans are therefore seeking to substitute domestic trips, or trips to Central and South America and parts of Asia.

A slowdown in the U.S. economy, and increased talk of recession, must also play a part. And those latter factors may be affecting an activity -- cruising in European waters -- that was supposed to avoid the high ground costs of Europe. I find discounts beginning to appear on Mediterranean cruises in high season, and as evidence of that, I can cite departures offered by the discount cruise broker that was mentioned in one of yesterday's blogs: Online Vacation Center.

In its current literature, Online Vacation Center is offering a 10-night cruise on the Noordam (a quality ship of Holland America Line), leaving round-trip from Rome on April 29 and May 19 for $999 per person in inside cabins. The ship goes to Dubrovnik, Corfu, Katakolon, Santorini, Kusadasi, Valletta and Messina, before returning to Rome.

On the same ship leaving from Rome on May 9, Online Vacation Center is charging $999 per person for inside cabins on an itinerary going to Livorno, Monte Carlo, Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca, La Goulette, Palermo and Naples, before returning to Rome.

If you're interested, contact Online Vacation Center at tel. 800/329-9002 or at www.onlinevacationcenter.com.

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Labels: europe

I've written before about the improbable, Tennessee-based operator of European bicycling tours that represents dozens of local European bike operators in the operation of so-called "self-guided" bicycle tours of Europe. Its prices often are 70% less than what most other American bike operators charge. The company is Bike Tours Direct (www.biketoursdirect.com), and for the equivalent of about $1,200 a week it provides you with accommodations with private facilities in two-star hotels each night, two meals a day (breakfast and dinner), shipment of your luggage from town to town, and detailed instructions on following the itineraries you're given. They take care of all the reservations and every one of your needs other than airfare to Europe, a bicycle -- rentable for about $125 for two weeks--and daily lunch.

While most of their tours run for a week, the trick is to combine tours into either a two- or three-week itinerary. When you do that, the results are magical. My own "dream itinerary" is one that starts in Orleans, France, and follows the Loire through the awesomely beautiful, historic Loire Valley to the Atlantic Ocean, from which you take a train back to Paris. For a 15-day, 14-night tour in 2008 (leave any day), the cost is around $2,400 -- and by bicycling standards (the major U.S. operators often charge $600 a day!), that's a remarkable price.

Bike Tours Direct has now incorporated all its 2008 tours into its website, and some of them are even cheaper than the Loire itinerary, including its most popular tour of 2007 called the "Danube Bike Path." Poland is a new destination for 2008, including five different weeklong tours that begin or end in Cracow. Among other new itineraries are Dubrovnik and the Dalmatian Coast, Amsterdam to Bruges, and tours of the Mosel and Rhine Rivers.

I wish I could announce a lower price for this year's Bike Tour Direct's European programs, but the dollar amounts are due to an exchange rate of nearly $1.50 for every Euro. As long as that exchange prevails, Europe is a fairly pricey place, but Bike Tour Direct is one of the most effective ways to experience the highlights of Europe's countryside and historic villages at a reasonable cost.

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Labels: cycling, europe

Thursday, February 13, is Valentine's Day, the year's most romantic reason for travel. Almost imperceptibly, the number of people choosing that occasion for trans-Atlantic trips has grown so massive that tour operators now devote several pages of their brochures and catalogues to listing the available options.

If you'll go to the website of Gate 1 Travel (tel. 800/682-3333; www.gate1travel.com) and then click on "holidays" and then on "Valentine's Day," you'll discover no fewer than 34 air-and-land packages to Europe priced at unusually low levels for Valentine's Day travelers. For four-night stays overlapping the holiday, in glorious capital cities ranging from Paris to Budapest, Florence, Lisbon, Prague, Madrid, Vienna, Barcelona and more, you'll find prices almost always below $700 per person and always below $800 per person, including airfare, accommodations, daily breakfast -- and best of all, fuel surcharge. The only items not included are breakfast, dinner, and government fees and taxes (the latter usually amounting to around $100 per person).

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Labels: europe, holidays

Now that the dollar's weakness has put an end to normal shopping (by Americans) in Europe, you may want to know about an item that you can buy affordably and in quantity overseas, and that will positively enthrall your relatives and friends when presented to them back home. On last week's edition of The Travel Show presented by my daughter and myself (www.wor710.com, go to weekend programming), my daughter interviewed the single greatest commentator on travel shopping, Suzie Gershman, author of the several Born to Shop travel guides (admission of self-interest: they're published by Frommer's). And Pauline asked: what can we now buy in Europe, given the pitiful state of the dollar?

"Have you considered designer salt?" responded Suzie. Turns out that designer salts sells for $30 and up in the United States (or on Amazon.com), but for only $3 a package at numerous groceries and super-markets in Paris, Frankfurt, Rome, and the like.

And what is "designer salt"? Apparently, it's salt with a special flavor, like raspberry salt. There's semi-coarse Hawaiian red Alea salt, small-flake Fleur de Sel, Jurassic salt, Peruvian Pink and Sicilian White salt, Kosher salt, Lavender salts, Ginger salts, French sea salt, Australian sea salt, Maldon salt, Murray River salt, La Baleine, Danish Viking Smoked salt, and (most expensive of all) Japanese Jewel of the Ocean salt, among many others. They come in coarse, plain, or chunky grains, and are “saltier” than usual salt. True gourmet chefs, I'm assured, would never dream of using just-plain salt (sodium chloride).

Look at the lengths to which we've been driven by currency changes.


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Labels: europe, shopping

Here are ten tried-and-true formulas (you may have heard of some, but not all):

1. Ask for a room without private bath. At more modest tourist-class hotels, this is the quickest and easiest way to get a room at a bargain. If you don't insist on having a private bathroom attached to your bedroom and are willing to make do with one down the hall (usually shared with one or two other rooms), you can often save 20% to 30%. Almost all "bathless" rooms in Europe have at least a sink in the room, and some even have a shower (just no toilet).

2. Bargain. European hotels always post the highest rate they can legally charge, even though that peak charge is asked only during the highest of high season, or when holidays, major festivals, or trade fairs book the city solid. At any other time of year, you can get the room for much less -- and if things are particularly slow, you can even get a discount on the going rate in low season. After all, they'd rather rent you a room for 10% less than their asking price than let it stay empty that night.

3. Opt out of breakfast. Hotels in Europe routinely add €5 to €10 per person to room rates to cover the cost of a breakfast that usually consists of little more than croissants or rolls, butter and jam, coffee, and juice. You can get the same thing -- and freshly made, not packaged -- from a corner café for half that amount and get the benefit of rubbing elbows with the locals on their way to work. Ask if you can opt out of breakfast for a reduced rate.

4. Check the hotel website. Many hotels will post web specials, last-minute sales, or discount packages on their sites, especially in low season. It's always worth Googling your intended hotel's name and city to find its website; even if there are no discounts listed there, at least you'll get to see photographs of the place and a locator map.

5. Try an online booking service. Even if a hotel doesn't bother posting web specials on its own site, there's a good chance you can get a room for less than the advertised rack rate by going through an online booking service and taking advantage of their bulk discount. Two in particular stand out: www.venere.com and www.booking.com. Both specialize in Europe and, unlike the major booking engines, tend to include a lot of smaller, family-run, two- and three-star hotels.

6. Lodge the whole family in one room. Asking the hotel to place an extra cot or two in your room for the kids will only add 15% per bed to the rate -- far less than booking a second room.

7. Pay cash. Many hotels, especially the cheaper mom-and-pop joints, will shave 3% to 5% off the price if you pay in cash -- essentially, they build the fee the credit cards charge them into the room rates, and are honest enough not to charge it when they won't be paying that fee.

8. Pick a "matrimonial" bed. This tactic is admittedly getting a bit hoary, as it only applies in some small, generally one-star hotels where they still charge a higher fee for a room with two twin beds than one with a single "matrimonial" bed (of a size ranging somewhere between an American double and a queen).

9. Stay in residential neighborhoods. In Europe, inexpensive hotels tend to cluster around major train stations, but these are often bland, dirty, unappealing locales, whereas if you were to stay in a hotel that's in a pleasant residential area, you could save money while also experiencing a living, breathing, genuine side to the city few tourists get to see. Just be sure you're near a subway stop or major bus line and are no more than a 15-minute ride from the sights you came all this was to see.

10. Consider a different lodging option. There are many alternatives to hotels these days, from B&Bs to rental villas, most of which cost less than a traditional hotel while often offering a more interesting cultural experience (such as staying on a working farm or home-swapping). Go to "Search this Blog" at the upper right-hand corner of your screen, and you'll find a number of hotel alternatives that I've mentioned in past blogs.

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Labels: accommodations, europe

The high cost of bicycle tours is a problem that has caused much anguish. Despite the fact that it is your own two legs that provide the transportation, a bicycle tour -- as offered by U.S. companies -- invariably costs far more than an escorted motorcoach tour of the same areas. For some inexplicable reason, the bicycle tour companies take an elitist tack, making use of the most upscale lodgings and meals on the tours they operate. Even when they don't, they claim that the need to supply two tour leaders (one to cycle ahead of the pack, the other to cycle at the rear) and one "sag wagon" (carrying luggage, as well as exhausted participants who don't want to continue cycling) elevates their costs to stratospheric heights. The result is that most of the leading bicycle tour companies are as elegant as they come, charging $500 and $600 a day for their tours.

That's why it's helpful to know about BikeToursDirect (tel. 877/462-2423; www.biketoursdirect.com), which represents overseas (not American) bike tour operators whose low overhead and frequent departures allow them to offer prices as much as 70 per cent below U.S. levels. Their self-guided (without escort) tours start at less than $750 a week (including hotels, breakfasts, route information, luggage transfers, and bikes), and their guided tours (including support vans, dinners and guides) start at less than $1,050 a week.

You'll be impressed by the company website's many features, and especially those that invite you to insert your preferences and instantly receive recommendations of the best tour for you. The company's 2008 program includes new tour itineraries through Poland (five different routes), along the Danube, into the Loire, from Amsterdam to Bruges, and on many other interesting roads.

So here's your chance to beat the system, using modest two-star and three-star hotels, dispensing with the group, the leaders, and the sag wagon -- bicycling through Europe on your own, as you were meant to do.

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Labels: cycling, europe, websites

Pick any popular area, where tour buses prowl and hotels and restaurants charge a premium. Now shift your gaze slightly north, south, east, or west and you'll find an area that is undoubtedly just as attractive yet far less trammeled and, hence, less expensive. It almost goes without saying that, as with any strategy that takes you off the beaten path, this also offers you a chance to have a more unique and rewarding travel experience away from the madding crowds that infest the most popular areas.

Here are a few illustrations to prove the point. Millions of visitors descend each year upon the beaches and towns of Provence, yet relatively few venture further east along the Mediterranean coast to France's Languedoc region, also full of sunny beaches, roman ruins, mighty castles, fine wines, and pastel-washed medieval towns.

For every hundred tourists who drive the Ring of Kerry and kiss the Blarney Stone in Western Ireland, maybe ten head just north up the coast into County Clare, famed for its traditional music and dramatic landscapes--and perhaps only one or two of those might continue up into County Sligo, where postcard towns surround roofless abbeys and forlorn Celtic tombs top windswept hills.

Most visitors to Andalusia stick to the popular western half of the region along the Costa del Sol of the Mediterranean coast and the inland cities of Seville, Cordoba, and Grenada; few discover the charms of the eastern, Atlantic Ocean half of the region: the pueblos blancos string of whitewashed hilltowns, the ancient border town Jerez de la Frontera whence comes the world's sherry supply, pilgrim routes through stunning national parks, and the ancient city of Cadiz -- at more than 3,100 years old, the longest-settled human city in Europe.

In Germany, consider the castles of the Neckar River rather than those of the Rhine River, the towns of Franconia rather than those of Bavaria. In Switzerland, explore the eastern Appenzell region rather than following the crowds to Interlaken and the Berner Oberland to get your taste of the Alps.

This strategy of setting your sights just off-kilter from the tour bus routes can also work by degrees. Central Italy is a perfect example. Take Tuscany, a justifiably popular region, but a place where most tourism focuses on Northern Tuscany (Florence, Pisa, and Lucca) and the Chianti/Siena region of Central Tuscany. That leaves the Maremma in Southern Tuscany relatively unspoiled, discovered mainly by German bicycling groups.

But perhaps you're an old Italy hand who feels all of Tuscany is overcrowded and overpriced. Move one degree further out and to the east and cross the border from Tuscany into Umbria, a region that features many of the same attractions (medieval hill towns, Renaissance art, Etruscan ruins, picturesque vineyards) but is not nearly as popular and, hence, not nearly as expensive.

To those who say that even Umbria has already been discovered and is on a par with Tuscany, I say: continue out yet another degree, looking east into the regions of The Marches and, a bit to the south, Abbruzo. The hill towns and wineries continue, but the majority of tourists have turned back to seek out Rome or the Cinque Terre. These areas of Central Italy are still almost entirely yours to discover -- and at prices far below those of the Chianti in Tuscany.

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Labels: budget, europe, tips