Travel Insider

Archive for the ‘Apartments’ Category

If you’re looking at apartments for a vacation or long term stay in Europe, there are differences you should be aware of between the USA and Europe. If you’ve never been to Europe you may not be aware that most hotel rooms are much smaller than you may be used to in the US. While size makes an apartment a better choice, if you want to stay at or below the cost of  hotels in your price range, you shouldn’t expect  a large roomy apartment. An apartment advertised to sleep two for example, will usually be much larger than a hotel room for two, but it will likely be a studio apartment or a small one bedroom. Most bathrooms are very small compared to the US, in hotels or apartments.

While you’ll probably want a washing machine for a long stay, few places will have a dryer. Dryers are not too common in European apartments. In general Europeans are more conscious of saving energy, which may be why many small apartments do not have air-conditioning. If you plan to do any cooking, look for information about pots, pans etc. Most apartments will have a complete kitchen, but the quality and quantity of cooking utensils varies widely. TV’s are common, but usually only local programming is available. Few apartments offer internet or telephones.

If you’re traveling by car be sure to check if parking is available. When you are close to reserving make sure you verify the total cost includes cleaning, taxes, etc.

While all I’ve covered in these posts may seem complicated, that’s just one way of looking at it. Most listings include all the information you need to make a decision and the owners are usually very responsive to emails if you have any questions. I enjoyed discovering a new way to find accommodations. It was a great learning experience and well worth it. This is the first time I traveled using apartments for my stays and it was one of my most enjoyable trips. Take your time, enjoy researching and finding new places and have a wonderful trip.

Below are some of the websites I found useful for my searches and as I suggested in the previous post, just do a search for “europe vacation rentals” and you’ll find many more. These sites have loads of listings, and some include B & B’s, homes, villas, etc. IHA for example has 8,880 listings for Spain – France 19,818 – Hungary 329 …

• vrbo.com
• IHA.com
• homeaway.com
• ownersdirect.com

In upcoming posts I’ll examine the individual locations I stayed.  I’ll also be doing a series of posts on traveling by train.

In the previous post I discussed some of the advantages of renting an apartment in place of staying at a hotel. Now I’ll tell you how I chose and reserved the apartments I used on the 6 week trip to Spain, France and Italy.

As I had booked a cruise from Miami to Barcelona Spain, the first location, Barcelona, was my starting point. After that I had to decide where else I wanted to go. This part is really wide open. In my case another decision I made was to do all my travel in Europe by train and not to do any long overnight trips. So even with high speed trains I chose places that were within a few hundred miles (or less) of each other. I’ll have lots of details in other posts about booking and traveling by train.

The beach in Barcelona

Here are the places I chose for my trip. Starting from Barcelona,

I went to Montpellier France where I made an overnight stay in a hotel. From there I went on to apartments in:

• Antibes, France
• Italy
•  Cinque Terre
• Florence
• Rome
• Venice
• Milan

The first place to look of course, is Google (or your favorite search engine if you prefer another). A search term like “vacation rentals europe ” will bring up many of the companies that offer short term rentals. While you may find an individual offering rentals, you will probably want to stick with companies like VRBO.com that list rentals for individual condo/home/apartment owners. VRBO.com is one of the biggest and covers most of the world, but you will find many others that compete favorably. I’ll list the ones I used at the end of this series of posts on apartments.

Take your time with this. You need to compare different sites, look at dozens of offerings for each location and the more time you take to do a thorough job, the more likely you’ll have a great experience. When you locate a listing of apartments in the city you’re visiting you’ll want to look for the following:

• Neighborhood, location
• Number of people it sleeps
• Number or bedrooms
• Square feet (often in meters)
• Photos – (I only chose places with lots of photos)
• Availability for the time you need it
• Price (varies with seasons)
• Amenities

If you think you’ve found a reasonable unit, read any reviews by past customers. Next open Google maps ( maps.google.com ) and locate the apartment. Switching to satellite view, in most cases you should be able to navigate down to a street view. Go up and down the nearby streets and see if the neighborhood is one you are OK with. The map will also show points of interest, restaurants, public transportation and more.

Build a list of at least 3 or 4 choices and unless you’re traveling alone, you should discuss the pluses and minuses of each,with your travel companions. If you’re a careful shopper like me, you should now email each one, let them know you’re interested, and ask for a reduced price. Be sure to mention anything that might help the owner feel it could be worthwhile to lower the price. Perhaps you’re a senior, careful homemaker, experienced traveler, etc. Half of the apartments I rented reduced the price at least a little. A discount can help make your decision.

More about choosing an apartment in the next post.