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Cars & Roads. More than 250,000 Americans will buy and rent cars to see Europe, pay $50 per day for chauffeur-driven Cadillacs and $16 per day for Volkswagen buses. Cars can be rented through the American Automobile Association and from Hertz and Avis in advance, or from firms on the Continent, which have rates about $1 per day cheaper— $2.50 per day for a Volkswagen, plus 5¢ per kilometer (.6 of a mile) and gas. Roads are good except in Spain, Portugal, Yugoslavia, and behind the Iron Curtain. European gas prices are still exorbitant by U.S. standards, average 55¢ per U.S. gal., run as high as 84¢ per gal. in France and Italy. But special cut-rate government coupons provide a 21% discount in France, 30% in Italy.
Guided Tours. Conducted tours run as low as $587 for an eight-day, seven-country trip. There are special tours for bachelors (lots of nightclubs), theater buffs (1960 is the year for the Oberammergau Passion Play), stamp collectors (London's International Exhibition in July), golfers (following the tournaments and playing the best courses in the British Isles). For James Joyce fans, it is even possible to be conducted on a lurch through Dublin in the steps of Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom, taking two hours or two days, depending on how many "balls of malt" (Irish whisky) are downed en route. Touring cost for two: $6 in a horse-drawn Dublin cab. For $2.50 from West Berlin there is a guaranteed-safe-return tour, including bleak Communist East Berlin.
Where to Stay. All European first-class hotels in major cities will be jammed, have few rooms and small hellos for travelers without reservations. Paris' top triumvirate (Ritz, George V and the Crillon) are already booked well into August. Cost: upwards of $20 per day for double rooms. Second-class hotels and pensions will be easier to get into. Biggest crush will be in Rome, where the 17-day Olympics start on Aug. 25. Olympics officials are planning to set up beds in monasteries and schools for the 100,000 foreigners per day expected to attend, promise that "nobody will be homeless."
New hotels are rising in the Scandinavian countries. Copenhagen's Royal Hotel (double rooms start at $9) will be ready in July. In Spain, hotel rates are government-controlled, and the best, such as Madrid's Ritz and Palace, start at $12 per night for two. (Old Spanish Traveler Ernest Hemingway always stays at the Casa de Suecia.) Accommodations in Greece are better this year. The King's Palace Hotel in Athens, which opened last November, is first class. The Aegean isles of Paros and Rhodes will have more facilities ($5 to $6 per double room), and the new highway between Larissa and Salonica has a new hotel in the shadow of Mount Olympus.