European Cities

We are trying to find an RCI weeks trade into a major European city where we can fly in for an interesting week, without the need for a car, taking a couple of day trips by train or bus. RCI has very little to offer in urban resorts, and while we are being shown close to 145K available units on exchange, we've never had the likes of the Allen House in London become available. I know there are extra vacation 'pay as you go' hotels available in some cities like Paris, but we would prefer to exchange. Can anyone recommend a European city or two that we might search out for exchange. We are flexible as to location.

I have lately seen a few exchange weeks in Paris (Royal Regency) and Vienna (Hotel Deutschmeister) online at RCI, but they were off season. Vienna is a great city.

Hungary is usually an easy exchange in RCI, and they have a resort on the outskirts of Budapest that shows up fairly often. They used to have one in the middle of Budapest, but I have not seen that one lately.

The system with the best network of urban resorts in Europe, hands down is Hapimag, the world's oldest timeshare developer, and one that until recently only traded internally. A few month ago they started doing trades through DAE, but so far I do not see any of their urban resorts online at DAE. DAE may be able to get one by request, but that is just speculation. Hapimag has resorts in London, Paris, Amsterdam, Rome, Berlin, Munich, Athens, Vienna, Prague, and Budapest (bang on Castle Hill).

Another thought with RCI is flying into Nice and taking a short train ride along the Riviera to one of the timeshares there. The Riviera has very frequent train service along the coast, with stations sometimes very close to timeshares. Several summers ago, we traded through DAE into a seafront resort on the Riviera with a rail halt for the local trains half a block from the timeshare. Trains are a great way to get around most of the Riviera, except St. Tropez, which is not on the rail line. You can take a ferry or bus there from a nearby Riviera town, however.

Major European cities are the great weak spot in the timeshare world.

We've had some pretty good success getting Allen House and Odessa Wharf in London through RCI Points. There does not seem to be any availability in RCI Weeks anymore for London: I've had ongoing searches for many months with strong traders and nothing has turned up.

Also consider the Fitzpatrick Castle timeshare for Dublin and the Edinburgh Residence in Scotland, also through RCI. You could take lovely day trips from either. They are both difficult trades so put in an ongoing search at least 18 months in advance and plan to go in the offseason.

RCI also has timeshares in Florence, Venice, and Rome. Of the three, Venice seems to be the most available. Again, ongoing search well in advance, and don't plan on summer or holiday travel.

SFX (San Francisco Exchange) has some availability in London also: you could check with them to see if your week is a deposit they will accept.

Ditto what Carolinian said on Vienna and Budapest. My parents have stayed at the Budapest resort, and they said it was very nice, although count on more than an hour to get to the city and another hour to get back.

I had forgotten Fitspatrck Castle, but that is a resort I have occaisionally seen online at RCI, even after the ''enhancements'' but always offseason. Edinburgh Residence has also popped up a time or two.

As far as location within a city is concerned, Hotel Deutchmeister is very well located in Vienna, just a couple of blocks outside The Ring (where the city medieval walls stood until the 1860s) and half a block from a metro station. You can actually walk to most of the sights since most of them are inside The Ring.

SFX has a London resort that used to be with RCI but now trades only through SFX.

We've had good luck with resorts that are within 50Km of a city. Rail service almost always excellent (I wish the US had such a convenient network), and day-tripping it into the city is not much of an inconvenience. Just check a rail map prior to booking.

We've also had very good luck with English timeshares that are in smaller cities like Exmouth -- there are wonderful sights to see within one hour of Exmouth.