Travel: Europe Plain & Simple

They seldom stop at Rome’s elegant Hotel Excelsior, nor do they drink at the Ritz Bar in Paris. In London, they would not dream of dining at Claridge’s.

More likely they will traipse off to the Neptune, a tiny Soho seafood house operated without frills by Sam Abrahams, who formerly peddled jellied eels from an East End pushcart. The first time a bunch of budget Baedekers swarmed into his place, Sam “couldn’t understand where all the Americans came from.” Today, however, Sam is well aware that nearly all of his Stateside customers brandish a $1.95 paperback tome titled Europe on $5 a Day.

Introducing itself as a guide “for tourists who own no oil wells in Texas, and are unrelated to the Aga Khan,” $5 a Day sets a chatty, no-nonsense pace that struck oil with 15,000 readers when it first appeared in 1957, this year is on its way to a record sale of 150,000. It leaves descriptions of the Louvre or Westminster Abbey to others, concerns itself single-mindedly with practicalities —the cheapest ways of getting to Europe and moving around once there, how to rent a bicycle in Copenhagen, how to read a menu in Italian, how to see the most sights at least expense (a sidewalk cafe in Paris, folk dancing in Stockholm), and most important, a list of the most elusive of all things in a strange city—clean but cheap places to sleep and eat.

Need & Notion. $5 a Day is the creature of a 32-year-old Manhattan attorney, Arthur Frommer. Frommer got into the travel business as a pfc attached to U.S. Army Intelligence in Germany. “Sensing a need,” he assembled and published G.I.’s Guide to Travelling in Europe in 1955, based largely on his own legwork. Now, companion $5 a Day volumes by Frommer and his associates survey New York, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Los Angeles-San Francisco-Las Vegas (in one volume). Last year Frommer finally and reluctantly gave up his law practice.

The Frommer ground rules are spartan. Though $5 a day covers a room and three meals, exclusive of transportation costs, a frugal tourist is reminded: 1) “Never ask for a private bath with your hotel room. Few Europeans regard a bath or shower as a daily necessity.” 2) “Try filling up on two or three continental breakfasts in place of eggs and bacon.” 3) “Never patronize a restaurant that doesn’t display a menu in its window.” 4) “Don’t leap to find a hotel. Check your bags at the airport or train station while you go out to look . . . Never rent a room sight unseen.”

When Frommer and his actress wife travel, they still go by the book. Their favorite hotel in Nice is “a place where we eat breakfast in the kitchen in bathrobe and slippers. And the guests are French.” Frommer’s prose often pauses for such provocative asides as “Here the beds are somewhat narrow and suitable only for couples, to whom this book sends best wishes” or “I like the hotels on Rue de Buci, a block away from all the existential activity.” Of Rome’s Pensione Eureka he says: “Its star attraction is impish Mrs. Imperoli, a dead ringer for Romy Schneider.”

Readers readily second Frommer’s theory that luxury hotels with English-speaking staffs “and a branch of Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith in the lobby” tend to insulate Americans from the very Europe they came to see. Frommer receives 1,000 testimonials each year from a list of tight-fisted correspondents that includes schoolteachers, ministers, engineers and architects. But some of the raves are qualified.

Best Since Marshall. Most common complaint is a byproduct of Frommer’s very success: hotels and restaurants recommended by the book soon become American hangouts, then hike their prices. Last week in Paris one proud hotelier told Frommer: “It is your book which bought this elevator.” But the new lift meant higher rentals, and Frommer sadly made a note to drop the hotel from the next edition.

Despite his vigilance, Frommer occasionally errs. In Stockholm, the three-masted sailing ship Af Chapman is a highly recommended stopover for students on a Starvation Budget, with no mention of the fact that its hostel regulations impose a rigid 11 p.m. curfew. Conversely, Vienna’s list includes at least a couple of hotels that generally rent rooms to streetwalkers and their clients, and a drinking spot that is an underworld rendezvous frequently surveyed by police. Nevertheless, says the manager of London’s truly familyish Arundale Hotel, “This book has been the biggest aid to Britain since the Marshall Plan.”

Those travelers accustomed to the standards of France’s Guide Michelin —or even the lounge-lizard airs of Fielding—may lack stomach for the unstarred beaneries and spare accommodations of Frommer’s Europe. But others choose the best of both worlds, take the money they have saved with $5 a Day and squander all on a gala dinner at the Tour d’Argent—where the décor is exquisite, the food superb, and the prices unmentionable.