How We Started Exchanging

 I have always loved to travel, and tried to do so as much as possible when our children were small to instill the love of travel in them as well.  I think it worked, as they seem to be traveling almost more than we do now! We hit the usual California family vacation destinations such as Disneyland, and the great beach towns of Santa Cruz, Carmel and Bodega Bay, but also had a wonderful trip to Europe with them to Paris, London, and an apartment looking out over the Grand Canal in Venice one summer, a Washington D.C. and historical East Coast trip, a trip to the Greek Islands another summer with one daughter, and an African safari with another one, as well as great memories made in Hawaii, Costa Rica and Mexico.  


 We always stayed in hotels, or rented vacation homes for extended periods of time, but five years ago I discovered another way to travel which has been by far the best way to see the world!  Anyone can do a home exchange if you have a first or second home in a location someone else wishes to stay, whether it is a small city apartment, a mountain ski cabin, or a villa in Italy.  This is how I got hooked and where it has lead our family.  Maybe I can pique your interest along the way as I share the stories of the exchanges we have done, as well offering some tips and advise so that you may be encouraged to try this new way to vacation yourself. I would love to hear from you if you have any questions I can answer, or if you have comments to share with others.  


The exchange letters of inquiry I will be inserting into all of my posts have been copied directly from the requests I received, so if there are spelling and grammatical errors please take that into consideration. 


Let the journey begin!

Bergamo, Northern Italy, just 50 va from Como Lake, 220 kms from Venice, nice house on two levels, ethnic style with private garden

THE MESSAGE:

HELLO,PLEASE CHECK OUT OUR LISTING AND LET US KNOW IF YOU ARE INTERESTED FROM MID JULY TO MID AUGUST.

SINCERELY

MARIO

Bergamo, Italy! What a wonderful first exchange request to receive. Cobbled streets, churches, squares and bars, none of which I hear have noticeably changed since the Venetians ran the place, throw in a trattoria or two with hanging hams, outstanding views of the Lombardy plains, Bergamo hills and pre-Alp mountains, as well as a lovely home with private garden and you have what sounded a little bit like heaven to me.  I could hardly believe that Mario was inquiring about an exchange for our new condominium in Costa Rica so soon after having signed up on the Internet exchange site, homeexchange.com  in December of 2006.  One month later I was well on my way to exploring the wonders of home exchanges.

      We bought our three bedroom, ocean view Costa Rican condominium at Reserva Conchal, located on the northern Pacific coast in the state of Guanacasta in August of 2006 as an investment, and planned to use it ourselves for about two months of the year.  It seemed like such a waste to have it sitting there unoccupied for so much of the time, but we were hesitant to place our brand new home into a rental pool.  What would renters do to our white sofas and chairs? Would our new wine glasses end up broken and mismatched?  How many wild parties would be held there?  As an alternative to renting our home to strangers through a rental company we wondered if we would be able to use it to exchange for other vacation homes, providing us the vehicle to visit other parts of the world when we were not in Costa Rica.  We hoped that fellow vacation home owners would lovingly look after our place in the manner which they looked after their own homes. I researched Internet home exchange sites and determined that homeexchange.com fit my needs the best, had excellent reviews, and provided the largest selection of exchange properties from which to choose.  Could this actually work? We were soon to find out the answer to our question was a resounding yes!

HomeExchange.com™ - Listing #65437 - 3 Bedroom Ocean View Condo 5 Minutes From Beach On The Pacific Coast of Costa Rica Near Tamarindo

    And this is the listing which started it all.  We added to our homeexchange.com listing pictures of our tropical condominium along with pictures of glorious Playa Conchal, where we love sitting on the sand with an ice cold Imperial or mojito in hand while taking a break from swimming or snorkeling in the warm, turquoise bay. We also added pictures of the views from our third floor balcony overlooking the Robert Trent Jones golf course and the entire bay, and described the location and the surrounding communities of tiny Brasilito  which we can walk to from our place and where the locals live, the high energy surfing town of Tamarindo, and the boating community of beautiful Flamingo where old Hollywood stars built their homes upon seaside cliffs in the 1960's. We wrote a short summary about who we were and what kind of exchanges we were interested in, and then sat back and waited to see what would happen.  And then we heard from Mario!  Could we go to Italy?  Realistically it wouldn’t work into our schedule at the time, but I was so excited to receive this note that I spent hours looking through the exchange web site viewing all the spectacular opportunities just waiting for us.  I also started receiving more exchange requests!

Mario from Bergomo, Italy wanted to come and stay at our home, but so did Aline with an apartment in the middle of Paris, Michelle who had a ski home in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, Kristen with a brownstone in Boston, Lauren with an apartment in downtown Manhattan, Kirk with a Santa Barbara cottage by the sea, and Bob with an apartment walking distance to Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles, all wanted to come to our little bit of paradise in Costa Rica.  And all this just within the first month of adding our listing to the exchange site! I felt like I had hit a gold mine, but now I had to decide realistically how much traveling we could do, and when.  Little did we know that in the next five years we would make arrangements for fifteen exchanges, all of which allowed us to enjoy the destinations chosen as locals, not tourists, provide room for us to be able to invite friends and family to join us in these lovely homes, spread out, relax, and enjoy vacationing in a delightfully new way, as well as providing some wonderful stories and adventures to tell. 


Stay tuned for our first exchange adventure!