patrick.net

Check the reviews on Tripadvisor.

We had great success doing house swaps via Craigslist with other families with kids.

Christ that's some big jumps in one trip and you are going to lose at least a day with each jump. Plus customs and airport hassles times 4. Why would you do that, especially with a 2 year old?

Airbnb is a good way to go if you aren't mentally locked into hotels. You get a great online map of properties to work off of and all kinds of filters you can apply. Sometimes you can rent an entire apartment/house for the cost of a midline hotel chain room. That means a kitchen, bedrooms, and space to spread out. Usually you have a very eager to please real person with lots of local information right there. I've always found (so far) the properties to be exactly as represented or better than represented. But you will be dealing one on one with an individual not with a corporate employee who deals with guests and guests problems all day every day. So some flexibility may be required.

My trip last month I got a 3 bedroom apartment 5 minutes from montreal airport (with food in pantry, fresh bread, and a fridge with milk juice, butter, bonus) for $62 a night and a 3 bedroom apartment in an eastern cuba upscale (sort of) beach resort for $50 a night with air conditioning. I would think Gdansk, Venice, Paris, and Copenhagen. should be no problem.

bob2356 says

Airbnb is a good way to go

Beware of Airbnb!

The owner can cancel on you at the very last moment (literally an hour before you're supposed to get the keys), and you're just fucked. If you do that to them, you have to pay, but if they do that to you, you get like a $70 credit for later use on Airbnb. It happened to us. Not too much fun.

Airbnb actually sucks often enough that I won't use them anymore.

rando says

Airbnb actually sucks often enough that I won't use them anymore.

Beware of any travel booking.

Funny, I've used airbnb probably 30 times with probably half overseas without ever having a problem. The advantages of having an apartment/house instead of a hotel room far outweigh the possibility of booking problems for me. Everyone has to decide what their values are.

A hotel can over book too. I've had it happen at least a dozen times when I used to travel a lot on business. If you get cancelled then you just go somewhere else.

Shit happens when you travel. Planes, trains, and automobiles break. Weather happens. Overbooking and lost reservations happen. Revolutions sometimes happen, my one time business partner was stuck in south america for 4 months once. Work it out and move on. Anyone that expects a perfect trip is usually going to be disappointed.

Airbnb.
There is seldom an issue, and if there is one, Airbnb will fix it.

Thank you guys for all the input.

I ended up using tripadvisor primarily and then getting kicked over to expedia, hotels.com, and booking.com and was able to find good options.

I've used Airbnb with great success here in CA. I wanted to try it with Europe but with the wife and the kids, I think I want the ease of being able to arrive anytime and not worry about finding keys, struggling to reach landlords, etc. So we went the hotel route.

All booked for Gdansk, Venice, and Paris. Just need to book Copenhagen and we are good!

BayArea says

Copenhagen

Just make sure nobody in your group blasphemes against Islam, because Denmark prosecutes that. You can burn a Bible on government TV and they'll give you a show, but if you blaspheme against the hateful fraud of Islam, they'll prosecute as the dead charlatan Mohammed commanded.

Last time I was in the UK, I stayed at the Victory Services Club. Pretty cool.

https://www.vsc.co.uk/

Looks nice, but only for military people, right?

rando says

Looks nice, but only for military people, right?

Or military retirees.