When is the best time to book a hotel room for a good deal?

Every week a Guardian Money reader submits a question, and it’s up to you to help him or her out – a selection of the best answers will appear in next Saturday’s paper.

When is the best time to book a hotel room? I am going to Germany in October and decided to book in August as I thought it would be cheaper. It was quoted at €80 at an apparent 15% discount. The same hotel is now selling rooms at €60 for the same dates. It is quite annoying. What should I do next time rosslakehotel.com?

On day two, the sun shines. Light pours through the glazed pavilion roof of the Herbert Art Gallery (a pivotal part of the successful bid for City of Culture), where I wander into a museum space with a permanent collection devoted to local history: from medieval ribbon-making to a model example of postwar town planning to “motor city” factories and an advert for a 1960s Hillman Minx convertible. The first major exhibition devoted to 2 Tone, the groundbreaking independent record label and music movement that started in Coventry in 1979, runs until September.

In and around the Cathedral Quarter I am surprised to see how much of the older city survives

In and around the Cathedral Quarter I am surprised to see how much of the older city survives. Every now and then I come across a row of wonky timber-framed buildings or a narrow, cobbled street squeezed between 14th-century sandstone walls. There are pretty gardens around the Priory church of Saint Mary, with remnants of Coventry’s 12th-century monastery. Nearby, the aforementioned Historic Trust is turning three half-timbered houses into holiday cottages. And then there’s the cathedral.

Architect Sir Basil Spence was chosen to design a new cathedral to sit alongside the sombre ruins of the old one – gutted by incendiary bombs in November 1940. Completed in 1962 and dedicated to peace and reconciliation, his vast church features work by some of the period’s best-known British artists, notably John Piper’s astonishing Baptistry window. The word “awesome” is generally overused, but in this case, I can’t think of a better one.

Back at the hotel, I check out the Generators bar (up on the roof – where the newspaper’s generator used to be) and poke my head into some of the rooms. There are Snug doubles (also known as Darkrooms – they have no windows), accessible Freedom rooms and split-level Studio rooms with mezzanine bed decks and doors on to a glass-roofed “winter garden” with hedges of fake foliage. I prefer my more standard Bigger Room (none of them is small), but the most popular, I am told, is the Lord Iliffe Suite (named after the paper’s erstwhile proprietor, it has a lounge and hot-tub terrace).