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Posted by on February 20, 2019

Sweet capitals, require sweet capital. I just love visiting major cities! Love love love, in fact. However, things cost more in big cities, especially capitals, and sometimes my budget won’t stretch (or, I’d prefer to spend it on clothing and other goodies!).

One way I’ve discovered you can stretch the moolah is by staying in a hotel outside of, or on the edge of, a city and then commuting in. It’s a great way of seeing where the real people live, too! So, unlike with a commute, it doesn’t feel like time wasted… And I’m quite fond of perusing the guide book, whilst my partner keeps an eye out for our stop!

Plus, with the biggest cities, capitals included, there are often day use hotels available. At some point we needed a base to rest up for a few hours after a full day of sightseeing so that we could go out in the evening. Luckily, we were able to find many hotels by the hour in London offered by daybreakhotels.com.

Our main hotel, however, was in Chesham, which is out in London zone 9. We used Oyster cards to minimise travel costs, and always took the fab red London buses which allowed us intimate glimpses of all the zones in between there and zone 1.

                                                                 Nice, quiet Chesham (Photo: Graham Horn)

Similarly, over in Paris, we decided to stay in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, which is 19 km from the very centre of the city, but easily accessible by the RER A train. What we liked about this suburb was that, unlike Versailles, for example, it was relatively cheap; it’s also home to many Anglophiles, so we felt that we were treated in a very friendly manner, despite me speaking no French at all and my partner only having a basic level.

Berlin was another place where we played this trick. We booked an Airbnb in the suburb of Spandau. We half chose this because my partner once had a crush on Tony Hadley from Spandau Ballet! But also, we saved a fair amount on accomodation costs, even though we booked a very decent hotel room, and then a hotel by the hour a couple of times during the week when we really wanted to make a full day of it.

                                                                 The citadel at Spandau was worth visiting (Photo: avda-foto)

I want to call this mode of travel ‘Suburban Super Saver’, but if you can think of a better name for it, do let me know! In the long run, it saves you money, and is a wonderful way of getting to know cities at their edges as well as their more famous middles.

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