Where to stay when traveling

I would like to preface this post by declaring that I am not a representative of any online company and am not getting paid to advertise for advertise for anyone [though if you sign up we could earn travel credit, so if you wanted to do that give us a shout out first and we'll send you an invite ;) ]. With that out of the way, I would like to recommend to you Airbnb when traveling. We have found housing through their site three times now and it has, so far, been nothing but a success!

If you are a host, you post the place you have for rent, be it a room in or off your house or a separate apartment or even a house! Those who are traveling type in the location they would like to go, and a map pops up with locations in that location and the nearby cities. Each location/host will have lengthy descriptions, pictures, and reviews from other travelers so you can get a feel for the host and their place. The first time we used the site was on our trip to Austria last year, when we rented an apartment that we and our friends shared for five days.

On this journey we rented a studio apartment in Munich and a room in someone’s house in Heidelberg. 

This was the studio apartment that we stayed at in Munich. Complete with a balcony, it was a great fit for us and inexpensive!

 

This method adds a new element of adventure because you are staying somewhere where the locals live. You’re not in a cookie cutter hotel room with the bland walls and common place water colored pictures above the beds. Each location offers you a host of personal experiences that a hotel could not offer you. Furthermore, we find this option to be much cheaper than hotels, and we can also call or email the host to negotiate our arrival and departure times. The décor, furniture, and style of the locations we stay at also offer us a taste of the culture as seen by our host. Even though we browse through pictures before selecting where we will stay, it’s always a different experience than anticipated in person.

 

Heidelberg is a fantastic place! And being a city many hundreds of years old and steeped in history, coupled with a famous university, hiking trails, and castle ruins, it was a very pricey place to stay! Our most cost effective option would be to have a room in someone’s place. I had a slight hesitancy at first, since we previously had only had places entirely to ourselves. But we took the leap and it may be the only option we chose from now on!

The pinkish tinted room above was the one we stayed in at Heidelberg. Again, the decorations may not be something I would do in my own house, but it was fun for the experience! We had our own room and bathroom and balcony, and the entrance was off of their kitchen balcony so if we were to come home late at night we wouldn’t even disturb much of the family as their rooms were off a different hallway.

A fun staircase in our room!

Our host truly adopted us into her family for the day! When we first arrived, just after getting our own set of keys and dropping our bags in the room, she made us tea and we sat in her kitchen and had great conversations as we rested up from our drive there. She told us all we wanted to know about the city, where the best places to park for tourist destinations were, where to eat, and at what times. This is the sort of insider information you can only get from a local!

And small world that it is, she turned out to be an Italian woman who was born and raised less than an hour from where we currently live in Italy. As such, she spoke to our little one just like our Italian family do, and she doted on him like his grandparents.

 She is fluent in Italian, English, German, French, and Spanish. How fantastic is that? What a talent for languages. I am quite jealous and hope to reach fluency in as many languages some day. She has lived all over the world and had traveled much of California. She and her family are moving to France at the end of this year and she said we were welcome to come and visit her. I feel as though we made a friend for life, and at the very least another contact and connection in another country.

The balcony off of our room. We had a great view of the castle!

A closer view. Heidelberg was very quaint. We hope to go back there.

 

And the final picture is of our host lady crawling around with our little one. She loved him! And we fell in love with her and relished the experience to be adopted by her sweet family for our stay in Heidelberg. I highly recommend this method when you travel. You will gain experiences and connections I don’t believe can be found in a hotel.