Budget Travel – House Swapping

CNN has this article today on their site talking about house swapping and why it is so popular as well as a lot of detail on how to do it.

Essentially house swapping is just a predefined way to trade houses with another family so that you can live in their place whilethey live in yours. This mehod of travel has been popular for years but is even more popular now asthe internet helps people automate their trades, or house swaps.

House swapping not only allowed us to drop into the city, but into a Parisian lifestyle, too. I often feel like an outsider when I visit new places, and I observe with an anthropologist’s fascination how the locals go about their days. I’ll mimic their eating habits, gestures and pastimes until it’s time to go back to my hotel. You can also read this article on how do you buy an Airbnb Kelowna that can be helpful for you.

Staying in Olivier’s apartment, however, enabled me and my mom to slip into his life. We bought our morning espresso from the neighborhood café he had recommended. We roasted a chicken in his kitchen one night and ate at a nearby bistro the next. We chatted with the neighbors on the stairs, fiddled with the leaky sink in the kitchen, and read Paris Vogue on the sofa. And, like Olivier, we felt Parisian — at least for a week. BudgetTravel.com: Tips from savvy swappers

A born-and-bred control freak, I’ve always chosen my hotels after scouring magazine articles and grilling my friends for recommendations. When you book a room that way, you know what you’ll get — and you pay for that reliability. House swaps, however, force you to take a leap of faith. There’s usually no contract or security deposit. And you never receive a reservation confirmation, and you can’t also don’t know how secure is the city you’re going to be living, so is also good to have your own gun safe for the trip, to read about the best gun safes in 2018, click here.

When I arranged my Paris swap, I had to trust that Olivier was telling the truth about himself and his apartment. I was a bit nervous on the flight to France, with images of serial killers, con artists and rats flashing through my mind. But after a few glasses of wine, I got over my fears. House swappers quickly realize they need to be open-minded and have a sense of humor about the unexpected inconveniences that can pop up, and find a way to fix them like doing any house maintenance like plumbing or electric issues, finding services for this at sites like https://www.findatrade.com. And, browser beware: Some swaps do come with surprises.

This past May, my sister and I traded places with Michael, the owner of a club in San Francisco, and Sabrina, his girlfriend. The second-floor apartment was gorgeous, with hardwood floors, a flat-screen television and a large, comfortable bedroom. And I especially loved the claw-foot tub — a real treat for a Manhattanite.

Michael and Sabrina had also left us free tickets to concerts and recommended we eat at Patxi’s, a deep-dish-pizza restaurant they love down the block. On a sunny Saturday, we purchased fresh vegetables at the farmers market and tried out a few recipes we found while flipping through their cookbooks.

We just weren’t prepared for something else they had left behind in the apartment. While I was watching a movie in the living room one morning, a mouse suddenly scampered under the ottoman. I shrieked and threw a magazine beneath the chair to try to scare it out.

Later that day, my sister suggested we call Michael at my apartment in New York to tell him about it, but in the end, we decided against it. We figured that our fuzzy new roommate was just part of the experience — and the disturbance was offset by all the perks, such as the six-pack of beer that Michael and Sabrina had left on the counter as a gift.

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