Leaving SeaTac — the adventure begins
Congratulations! You've successfully navigated flights and destinations and transportation. Now for the final planning steps of your Unique European Vacation! (More on my Spain relocation in another post!)
Step Four
Finding Accommodation
After mapping out your train routes and potential stops, it's time to find your perfect place to stay.
- Do Your Research: I recently discovered Historic Hotels of Europe — obsessed. But whatever resource you use, always dig deeper than the headline.
- Flexible Bookings: I almost always book hotels with free cancellation. Only commit to non-refundable options when there's truly no other choice — specific resorts, or visiting family in Rio where location is fixed.
"I once booked a 'fabulous castle' in Italy. My heart was happy — until I researched the travel time. Almost 7 hours from Milan, infrequent trains, a bus, and an enormous uphill walk with bags. I cancelled. Always verify location logistics."
A Note on Tourist Rentals — and Why We Almost Always Book Hotels
We almost always stay in hotels when we travel. Here's why — practical reasons first, then some context worth thinking about.
Points accumulation on stays you're already paying for. Daily housekeeping — a genuine luxury on a long trip. Reliable utilities — water, power, Wi-Fi that works. Staff on site if something goes wrong. And a significantly lower risk of scams, which we'll get to in a moment.
Protests against tourist rentals have been making headlines across Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Greece for the past several years. The reasons differ by location — and it's worth understanding both.
In Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Greece, the core issue is housing. Short-term rental platforms have converted so much residential housing stock into tourist accommodation that locals are being priced out of their own cities. Rents have skyrocketed, long-term leases have disappeared, and entire neighborhoods have changed character. This isn't abstract — we moved to Spain in 2023 and signed a year-long lease, only to have our landlord try everything possible to push us out before high season, when she could charge three times the monthly rent. We did move out. We're happier for it. But the loss of stable housing to tourist rentals is a real, ongoing problem, and it has led to increasingly strict regulation across the region.
In Venice, the tension is different. Venice doesn't have a historical housing shortage — the city is actually incentivizing people to come live there permanently. The protests there are directed at the sheer volume of tourists and the strain on infrastructure: overcrowded streets, disrupted daily life, and a city that can feel more like a theme park than a place where people live. We rented an apartment there through Marriott Homes & Villas in 2022 and loved it — but we were aware of that tension the entire time.
We're not here to tell you what to book. But before renting an apartment in a city where housing is already scarce, it's worth a moment's thought. A hotel room doesn't take housing off the market. A short-term rental might.
The Scam That Made Us Even More Cautious
There's another reason to be careful with rental platforms — especially for foreign listings. We booked what appeared to be an oceanfront suite through Capital One Travel for our anniversary. The listing used real hotel photos, had good reviews, and looked completely legitimate. When we arrived at the address, the hotel had no record of our reservation.
After hours on the phone with Capital One, they got the listing host on a call. The host provided a different address. We went there to find a tiny apartment — no sea view, nothing resembling what we'd booked. We were lucky: there was one room left at the actual hotel. Not oceanfront, but it had a balcony. We took it.
Capital One did not refund us — they issued a credit for future travel. What we learned during that call: foreign rental listings on their platform do not face the same scrutiny or vetting as American ones. The host had used real hotel photos and posted a fraudulent listing with no consequences.
If you find a great deal on a hotel, try to book directly on the hotel's own website — they sometimes discount you for doing so. At minimum, call the hotel and confirm your reservation while you are still within your free cancellation window. If the deal looks too good to be true on a foreign listing, it very well might be.
Important Notes on European Hotels
European hotels differ from American ones in ways worth knowing
- Occupancy Matters: Always input the correct number of guests in your search. In Europe, you might book a single twin room for less if you're solo — not ideal for a couple, as I learned in Dublin.
- Read Reviews & Amenities Carefully:
- Nightclubs: Popular cities often have hotel rooftop or in-house nightclubs. A rooftop bar is lovely; a club directly above you at 4 AM is not.
- Pools: A pool on the website doesn't guarantee it's open. Many hotels in Spain only open outdoor pools from June to October.
Step Five
Leveraging Points
Making points work for you
If you're a points enthusiast, here's how to get the most out of them without leaving value on the table.
- Spreadsheet Your Stays: Create a spreadsheet of potential hotels and calculate the cents-per-point value. Sometimes saving points for a luxury stay is smarter than burning them on a budget hotel.
- Don't Lose Free Night Certificates: Many credit card free night certs are capped at a set point value (35k or 50k). Luxury city-centre hotels often exceed this cap — but airport hotels usually fall comfortably under it. We often book our final night at an airport hotel to use up certificates before they expire. It saves money and makes the morning flight stress-free.
- Sign Up for Everything: Always create rewards accounts with any train, airline, or hotel chain you use. Even without collecting points, members often get free Wi-Fi or room upgrades. And future mergers — like when Choice Hotels acquired Radisson Americas — can suddenly make those orphaned points valuable.
Booking your final pre-flight night at an airport hotel is one of the most underrated moves in travel. You use up capped certificates, you skip the morning transfer stress, and you arrive at the gate calm. We do this almost every trip — including our stay near Milan Malpensa at the start of our Second European Rail Odyssey.
The Full Guide
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