One of the hardest things about planning a trip, in my opinion, is finding the perfect place to stay. In my trip planning infancy, I quickly learned that in Europe, the $89 budget hotel room (breakfast included!) that can sleep my family of four just doesn’t exist. Gone, alas, are the days of cramming ourselves into a single hotel room, listening to each other snore and paying nearly nothing to do it.
I also quickly learned that hotel charges in Europe almost always are based on occupancy. You don’t just to have the room, you pay to have a certain number of people in a room. For instance, you might find a great room for only 80 Euro a night, but upon further examination you’ll find that either a) the hotel will not allow more than 2 people (children included) per room so you’ll have to book two, or three, or even 4 rooms to accommodate your family, or that b) you’ll be allowed to have your children in the room with you as long as you’re willing to pay the extra 20 Euro apiece to cram them in. All of a sudden that great deal isn’t so great. Not to mention the fact that I just don’t feel super great about leaving my two young children in a hotel room on their own. And really, I’d like to see my husband while we’re on vacation, so splitting up every night isn’t so attractive either. How then, does one overcome these seemingly insurmountable obstacles without breaking the bank?
We do home/apartment rentals. Why is this such a FANTASTIC way to travel??? I’m glad you asked…
- A penny saved is a penny earned. Sooooo much less expensive. Yes, you can pay A LOT to rent very fancy villas, however, it is not terribly hard to find nice accommodations for significantly less than what you’d pay for comparable hotel space.
- We can cook our own food. Yes, we LOVE sampling the local cuisine. Really, what’s a trip to Italy without amazing pasta, or risotto, or, GELATO? (A daily necessity – trust me!) However, we don’t love eating out for breakfast, lunch and dinner every single day of our trip. For one thing it is EXPENSIVE. For another thing, and this is a kicker, I don’t really relish sitting with my children at a nice restaurant after a long day of museums and monuments when they (and I!) are at the ends of our ropes. Finally, I’d like (when that day comes) to return to the states somewhat recognizable. In other words, as much as I love eating tortellini with cream based sauce and gorgonzola, I don’t love the fat grams.
- We almost always have a separate bedroom for the kids. At the very worst, they sleep in the living room and we have a bedroom to ourselves.
- Privacy. The walls in hotels are thin. They’re thin in apartments as well, but usually we’re much less close to our neighbors than we would be in a hotel. With kids, this is especially nice. Nice for us and nice for the people around us.
- We usually have a washing machine, a full kitchen and oftentimes two bathrooms.
There are 3 websites that I have used to locate great apartments. They are:
and
Of the three, homeaway.com is my favorite. Vrbo is great if you’re travelling in the States, but if you’re travelling in Europe, it has a much smaller selection of rentals than either of the other two sites. Also, I find its layout isn’t as clear and its search engine isn’t as good. On homeaway.com (and greatrentals.com, which is a subsidiary of homeaway.com) you can establish better parameters for your search. For instance, you can limit your search not only by location, but by number of bedrooms, how many people it sleeps, price, location etc. On vrbo.com, your search is based on location and dates of availability only, so you end up spending a lot of time sifting through apartments that don’t meet your needs.
So, homeaway.com. When you go to the site, the first thing you’ll want to do is specify your location (i.e. Paris, France). You’ll come up with something like 1,556 choices. (I just tried it!) Obviously I don’t want to look at all 1,556. So, I first narrow my search by neighborhood. Let’s say I want to stay close to the center of town. Paris is divided into districts, or neighborhoods called arrondissements. The smaller the number, the closer you are to the center of town, and the closer you are to most major tourist attractions. For instance, the Louvre is in the first arrondissement. I click on the link for the first, and suddenly my result pool is down to 76 rentals. From this point I can use the search modifiers on the left of the screen. Now, if I don’t find an apartment that meets my needs in the first (entirely likely – it is very expensive to stay right in the heart of Paris) then I can go back and look for a rental close to a metro stop that is a little bit further out.
And, that’s all I have energy for tonight. Next up – contacting the owners, looking for hidden fees and making sure you’re getting what you see online. Bon soir!
