Daniel Sagi, a 29 year old graphic designer from Tel Aviv, and his girlfriend did a home exchange with a couple from Paris for a week. Here are his thoughts on what it’s like to be on a home exchange.
Experience Paris on a home exchange.
“Well, first of all, we were more relaxed for some reason. Usually when you stay in a hotel you feel the urge to get up in the morning and go sightseeing, but on home exchange we found ourselves enjoying staying around the house at times. Our hosts had a projector with tons of DVDs they gladly let us use and we had a movie marathon of Batman movies.
We really liked the fact we could use a kitchen and fridge as opposed to a hotel mini-bar. We were lucky enough to be located just in front of the local market with its French delis, so we bought wonderful cheeses, salamis and fresh groceries.
It was simply a treat to come back home after a day of exploring and have a great snack or a home cooked meal. This turned out to be a lifesaver at times, as we Tel-Avivians are used to have everything open 24/7, but in Paris the restaurants close at 23:00!
At other times we were just enjoyed being able to prepare food for a picnic in the park.
One of the reasons we chose home exchange from the beginning was the fact that we were able to spend more on fancy restaurants than we would have in a regular vacation.
Additionally, we knew that our budget would only last three days on a regular vacation, but home exchange made it possible for us to stay more than twice as long.
Daniel’s top tips for home exchange:
1. Check the local weather - try using Time and Date
2. Ask your home exchange partners about holidays and local business hours so you can traffic and eat at restaurants when they’re open
3. Use Google Street View to check out the neighborhood
4. Arrange to have a face to face meeting, even for a short-while with your home exchange partners. It makes a difference.”
Big thanks to Daniel for sharing his experiences with CasaVersa!
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