Beyond hotels: Lodging options

There are dozens of hotel alternatives, from Alpine shacks to Tuscan villas, farmhouse B&Bs to hostel dorms, rental rooms to residences, and campgrounds to castles to convents to cottages. Here's how to find the lot of them.

Hotels aren't the be-all and end-all of lodging options in Europe. In fact, for the most memorable trip, they might should be your last choice when it comes to looking for a place to stay for the night.

Hotels are usually among the more expensive options available, and rarely the most fun or remarkable. Even if you follow my own standard advice and consider your lodging to be just the cheapest comfortable place you can find to lay your weary head for the night, if you could get a bed that's both cheaper and in a more interesting setting, why not go for it?

Each country has its own hotel alternatives, from Alpine shacks to Tuscan villas, farmhouse B&Bs to youth-filled hostel dorms, rental rooms to residences, campgrounds to castles to convents to cottages. There are far, far too many different accommodation options—some 42 by my last count—to cover here in depth.

However, on the pages listed below you'll find two dozen of the most popular variants, including resources on how to find them and book them

Why, there are even a dozen ways to sleep for free.