Tip 6: Make sure your accommodations have dedicated parking
When we knew that we were planning for a self-driving holiday (especially a long term one), that meant that when we tried to book accommodations, we preferred the ones with dedicated parking spaces. Usually apartments are pretty good about having dedicated parking spaces, but it’s not such a guaranteed thing at hotels and B & Bs (bed and breakfasts). Indeed, knowing that there’s parking spaces in advance would take quite a bit of the stress off of trying to find street parking or other forms of public parking.
That said, if do find ourselves in a situation where parking’s not guaranteed, then we would look for public car parks that are supervised or require payments (like those barricades that only lift once you’ve paid and validated your ticket). We figured car thieves are less likely to target these places, especially since you have to pay and validate your ticket to get out. We’ve even forsaken free parking for a paid parking structure for reasons of security (e.g. in Sevilla, we could’ve parked by the university for free on the weekend nights we were there, but we didn’t feel comfortable with the unprotected nature of those spaces so we stomached the 20 euros per night for that piece of mind).
Sometimes it’s too inconvenient or difficult to drive into old city centers where the accommodations may be located (even if valet parking or dedicated parking is available). Sometimes we even have to find public parking several blocks or even a mile or so away from the accommodation, which would require us to walk that far just to check in. And only then would we find out from the accommodation where the best parking spots would be (if available).
We’ve had numerous instances of this throughout our travels (e.g. in Dubrovnik and Split, Croatia, where we’ve parked outside the city walls; in Mont-Saint-Michel in France where we had to take a shuttle to traverse the 11-mile causeway; in Montepulciano where we walked up to the accommodation before they gave us a permit to move the car across the ZTL and park next to a church). Indeed, we had to be open-minded about being flexible, and that’s why dedicated car park spaces (even at the expense of forsaking a prime central location) can save quite a bit of grief (not to mention the potential for a surprise penalty or fine).
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