Is anyone familiar with vacation rentals in Europe if you plan on making a "base camp"? We rented a house for one week in Cornwall, and it was very convenient. I'm not quite sure if it's a good option in other European countries.
Yes you can find the same kind of home or apartment rentals anywhere to use as a base.
You can get a vacation rental pretty much anywhere. Some countries you have to rent by the week, others you can rent by the day. If you do a search on "self catering (name of town)", you can find a lot that way. There's also bigger sites, like homelidays.com, that have listings for different countries, but I've found them to be more expensive.