Posted on: Sunday, October 10, 2004
Home exchanges can simplify vacations
| • | Serenity beckons in pastoral Umbria |
Advertiser Staff
Home exchanges have been the saving grace for our family of four when we want to take a big trip to another country.
Besides Intervac (www.intervacus.com), the site we used (because it offers discounts to Hawai'i residents), check these out: When Annamaria and Dino offered to lend us their flat and rent us their Umbrian weekend villa, we jumped at the chance. We couldn't arrange a simultaneous exchange, as our times didn't coincide. But we'll return the favor when they come visit us during their daughters' school break.
The nice thing about home exchanges is that you not only have a fully functional, usually safe suburbanly place to stay, but you also inherit a slew of friends. Tiziana, the sister of our host, greeted us at the airport and navigated us through the half-hour, white-knuckle drive through Rome. I'm sure if I'd tried to do that on public transportation, while jet-lagged, we would have had a much different experience.
Besides getting a place to lay your head, a kitchen in which to cook your meals and often a place in which to wash your laundry, if you arrange it ahead, may even do a car exchange. Not only does this save a bundle, but it makes for a much more relaxed visit, when you can "live like locals."
We've stayed in a little apartment in Dunoon, Scotland, a flat in Ostia outside Rome and now a villa in Umbria — doing our own dishes, preparing our own meals, meeting neighbors and making sure to leave the place as clean as we found it.
Where to look
