Last week, a regular reader named Ed wrote us to say that our article Saving A Fortune On Business Class Air hit home with him. “We have a wedding in Tuscany in June, and I won’t fly coach,” he wrote. American Airlines was asking Ed to spend 800,000 miles or $7,500 for two roundtrip tickets between Buffalo and Milan. He looked at fares on Air France from Toronto (a two-hour drive from Buffalo) and picked up four business class tickets to Tuscany for less than $2,000. “Check nearby airports for deals,” he says. “You may be pleasantly surprised.”

In that article about saving on business class, I mentioned three exciting moments that accompany new adventures. The first of those exciting moments was flying business class. The second moment is the arrival and checking into a hotel. If you’ve been a regular visitor to River Cruise Advisor, you know that we always recommend flying in a day or two before your river cruise embarkation. Why? 1) You need time to recover from the change of time zones and the impact on your body clock. 2) Your luggage, despite the airlines best intentions (or worst ones), may not arrive when you do. And 3) It’s smart to use the time before your river cruise to explore the European city where you’re embarking. Typically, these are wonderful cities such as Amsterdam, Paris, Lyon, Arles, Basel, Vienna, Budapest, Porto and others. 

I have two strategies for my pre-cruise hotel stays. One is to stay in an airport hotel. I did just that last April before my back-to-back barge trips in France. My flight took me to Frankfurt (arguably a more reliable airport than CDG). I had originally booked a dayroom at the Frankfurt Airport Hilton, but because my luggage was misrouted, I turned the dayroom to an overnight room. The next morning, I retrieved my luggage and continued my journey to Strasbourg for my barge trips. You can read more about 12 Things I Did Right When Traveling To Europe Last Month & One Thing I Got Wrong.

My other strategy is to book the nicest city-center hotel that I can justify. In September of 2021, before boarding Crystal Debussy (now Riverside Debussy), I enjoyed A ‘Free’ Stay At Amsterdam’s Waldorf Astoria. Click the link above to find out how I managed to stay for “free” in such a luxurious hotel.

It’s probably safe to say that we all love checking into a hotel in a foreign country. The right hotel often can be a highlight of an adventure. The wrong one can be a disaster – sleepless nights, unsafe locations, etc.

For my barge trips next month, we’re staying two nights at Hôtel Le Sauvage in Besançon and one night between barge trips at the Grand Hotel La Cloche in Dijon. Check out the links, and you’ll see that these hotels likely will be among the highlights of our trip. 

By booking these hotels several months out, I was able to get great rates. When rates aren’t great, I often use reward points or reward nights to book a hotel such as the Waldorf-Astoria in Amsterdam. And I don’t mind “slumming it” in a hotel such as the Doubletree at Amsterdam Centraal (the main rail station, also near where many of the river boats dock). The Doubletree is actually far from slumming it. It’s a wonderful hotel with the added bonus of a lively and scenic rooftop bar.  

What about you? Is there an international hotel that you fondly remember? Tell us about it in the comments below.