Whether you take pot luck or plan meticulously in advance, it helps to know your options 

This year, all I can do is tell you about places to stay (and ways to search for them) that have come to my notice, and leave you to make your choices based on what people tell me. Next year, I plan to visit some of the places and give you my personal impressions.

Let's start with a company that helps you to find and book hotels. 

AllRez.com connects to several separate sites, each covering different parts of Europe. Unlike many of the hotel booking sites I have examined, these list a good selection of local and privately-owned hotels as well as the usual American/International and French major chains. In all cases which I tested, supplementary information about the hotel and the area surrounding it was accurate and useful. 

I have mentioned before that agencies don't necessarily provide the best deals fro major hotel chains - it pays to cross-check with the chain's own web site, or even to e-mail or FAX the hotel itself. Small independent hotels may not have web sites, but they are also less likely to have a maze of tariff options that turns hotel booking into the same kind of challenge as buying airline tickets.

Here are the links to the AllRez.com sites

Florence Hotels
Florence hotels online Reservation. All available hotels in Florence, Italy with seasonal Promotional Rates. Easy to find hotel by Points of Interest.

Amsterdam Hotels
Amsterdam hotel Reservation. Discount Hotels and on line booking.

Barcelona Hotels
Reservation and discounts in Spain, cheap, budget and luxury Barcelona hotels.

Paris Hotels
Accommodation in Paris hotels. On line hotel reservation service.

Oh, and it looks as if I may inflict my first live investigation on author George East, who will be moving from the Mill of the Flea to a new Normandy home in mid-September. He claims to be starting to write TWO new books as a consequence of this move. Not surprising, really:

"I am afraid that we have, as usual, done the opposite of what we should.

Plan 'A' was to scale right down and buy a neat little cottage with a lawn and some flower beds, then concentrate on the selling of the books. However, I knew Donella would go mad without a bit of scope and scale and challenge, so we actually bought the first big place we saw when househunting.

Against all the rules that I have written in my books so many times, we saw the first house on our list and said 'that's it'......"

I'll tell you all about it when I get back to Africa. Meanwhile, keep buying the books or they'll have to move 100 goldfish and a pile of chickens  as well as writing yet another book -  when they sell up.