Friday, April 04, 2008

Deux salles, s'il vous plait

We are trying to plan our trip to France this summer. Gail's stepmother is coming with us, and this is causing us no end of grief. That sounds wrong — it's not her fault. We're looking forward to travelling with her (and not just because she's fluent in French!), it's just the fact that there are more than four of us that's the problem.

There are zillions of hotels and B&B's in France, but most of them don't seem to like groups of more than four (and a good number don't like groups of more than two). We are finding that we need to book two rooms every night because none of these places have rooms that can hold five people. It's pretty standard for hotels over here to have rooms with two double beds, and many of these have a fold-out sofa-bed as well, or you can get a rollaway bed brought to the room. We've stayed in hotels that had two queen beds and a double fold-out sofa-bed — and these weren't the upgrade rooms. I'd be willing to sleep on the couch for a night or two if necessary, but that doesn't seem to be an option either. For our week in Paris, we're renting a two-bedroom apartment because it's cheaper than getting two hotel rooms per night. This has the advantage of having a kitchen as well, so we can buy our own baguettes and cheese and escargots and make breakfast or lunch some days rather than going out to restaurants and cafés for every single meal.

What the hell do European families of five do when they travel? Do they always get two rooms?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Tell me about it!.... Having a family of five, it always been a huge issue trying to find places to stay that can accommodate five people - and it is not just Europe that is the problem; we have also found it a problem when traveling within Canada as well. Somehow, my wife has always been able to find something that has worked for us, but she also does the planning/booking eight months in advance.