Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast coming to you from a hotel lift in

Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And I'm just pushing open the door of the lift. Yes, you heard that right.

I'm pushing open the door because I am in the absolutely gorgeous 1930s ambassador hotel. And there's a couple of lists here in front of me

they have the most beautiful bronze motifs and a really heavy door which you can just hear swinging open

that you have to pull open before they do the slidy thing.

Just looking around the lobby, oh it's fantastic, the only place to stay in the fine city of Milwaukee.

Looking at the light fittings, which owe a great deal to Egypt I would say the ladies and the

gents washrooms have spectacular glassware looks like the work of Louis Comfort

Tiffany an artist who I have great respect for and the whole thing is as art deco as you could be.

Compared with anywhere else you could stay in Milwaukee, well I would only ever consider this place.

But what I want to talk to you about is how I book hotels and

what you can do in order to try to make sure that you get a fairly good deal and in order

to do that in a private way I'm going to leave the extremely elegant fittings I'm going to go out past the bar where oddly they've got

amid these lovely surroundings with an antique radio in the corner there. They've also got screens

showing boxing matches but here we have a gallery of all the

weddings that have taken place here and all the fantastic improvement. So I'm going to go out now

and talk to you about how I book hotels and how you might want to consider doing it as well. So I actually began by looking in guidebooks. Yes, they are still good. And it became clear that this property, which is in the west, quite a couple of miles actually, from where things

are really happening downtown, is regarded as the place to be. And I can absolutely see that

fact. It's a great place to stay. do look at trip advisor and see what people are saying um

and also i will then go to probably booking dot com so having established where i want to stay

i'll then go on to booking dot com and i'll see what sort of rates are being charged and also what the rates are for other properties.

So for example, right now the Wisconsin State Fair is on in the western parts of Newarky and that is pushing up up rates so I'll have a look and I thought

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