It all started with Scott Anderson. Dodie popped up the other day and reported that Scott and Rachel had booked accommodation for their entire trip.  That's crazy!, I think we both exclaimed.  If you lock in all the days, then one miscue - some mechanical, physical, weather, road, or other problem, and even if the bookings may be cancellable, you get a knock on chain rebooking headache of mammoth proportions. Plus, bookings that can be cancelled are normally a hefty amount more costly than irrevocable ones for the same rooms.

Spinning off these thoughts, Dodie reintroduced a concept she has floated before, but that has never found favour with me: Just cycle out each day, and see how it goes.  That way, if things go well, you can find a place far down the road. And if hills or any other factors intervene, you can stop short. The disadvantage of this is that once you roll into a town you have to go searching for the Tourist Information, or wifi, or cruise the streets looking for a place. Then you maybe end up either with a closed TI and nothing or with a desperate grab at something too expensive. That's why I favoured looking ahead one day, and booking from the comfort of a room, the night before.

But as fate had it, we missed any chance to debate the merits of these two models. It started when we found we had a chance to meet up with Dodie's Aunt Sophie, her cousin Ronni, Ronni's husband Joe, and Joe's daughter Kathryn. This would be in Prague, on one specific day.  So we fired up Booking, and saw that most places in Prague were already booked. This would be equivalent to Scott's discovery that Sicily was already booked. 

Once Dodie had booked in Prague, she began to scan up and down our track, only to see many places already booked all over the place, or at least few rooms left. I suggested that this could be a typical Booking trick of trying to stampede the customers. Sure, maybe Booking had no more rooms at a given hotel, but maybe the hotel had only allocated few to begin with.  So,  in an admittedly unscientific move, I took one where Booking had something for the day previous but claimed all sold out for the day we needed. I bypassed Booking and went to the hotel's own web site. And - Booking's story proved true.

So that did stampede us. Using patience possessed only by Dodie, it became a question of guessing where we might be, or could stay on each of about 70 days. To do that, you need to assess the route, look at what towns and accommodations are around, and make a stab in the dark. Given that stab, you need to guess what the scene will be for the next night. And repeat - 70 times! 

That seems to be about a three day job. And if there is a glitch - it could be longer than that to do cancellations and rebooking, and/or looking to short circuit matters with a train. This makes me more nervous than the prospect of any hills, cold, or rain we might encounter on the trip.

One thing we have also noticed is that hotel prices seem to be about 20% higher than what we remember for Austria and Germany just a few years ago. The average cost is about 85 euros (we will give exact figures later). That means that as Dodie and Booking crawl the route, they are playing with about 6000 euros in total. That's about $CAN 9000. That is definitely more than small change for us. Adding to it with some, or any, "no show" charges would be a bad idea!  That's a reason why it's good to have Dodie ("Dodo" to the Montreal kids) on the case. I can scarcely be trusted to know my own birthday, let alone on what date to book what place for how much  in Torgau, or wherever.

Oh, wait a minute now. Dodie has just computed an actual value for that 85 euro estimate, and it's 68 euros - including breakfast. Dodie says she achieved this by frugal choices in a sea of costly places. OK! So the 6000 euros I was crying about becomes 4000, taking into account times when we are staying with friends.  So my error in the paragraph above is 2000 euros ($CAN 3000). That's a giant pile of tortes. Let's go for it!

Appendix I: Bicycle Parking

For each booking, Dodie sends an inquiry about a safe place to stash the bikes. Because of the language barrier, some responses are pretty humorous. How about this one:

"Hello ,Mr Miller of cours we can require you two bicycles . Are the bicycles for a human or for a women?

Von meinem Samsung Galaxy Smartphone gesendet. "

Or this one:

"Dear Customer Thank you for your booking!An important clue: In case of loss of the card we charge a fee of 25 € "

OK, we'll try to hang on to the card, whatever that is. Now what about those bikes?

Appendix II:  Book 'Em Dodo?

This title came to us because of watching a lot of the detective show 'Hawaii Five O" from 1968. Oh my, that's 50 years ago!! Anyway, still fresh in our creaky minds is the fact that the star, Jack Lord, on solving the case at the end of each and every episode would instruct his assistant, Dan: "Book 'em, Danno - Murder One"!