We hope that it won’t happen but…What can we do if we get ill right before our home exchange holidays and we have already bought the flight tickets?

The probability of cancelling a trip is very low, but it can always happen that you feel sick at the very last minute.

If we have already bought our tickets then we may lose our money. And if it’s true that nowadays we can change our flights till the last minute, we should remember that maybe if we are ill we won’t be able to know exactly which dates will be suitable for our new journey. So…How can we avoid to worry about this problem?

The best solution can be assuring our trip. After a research in the web we saw that there are plenty of travel insurance offers. You normally can choose what areas you want to cover: medical and other expenses, cancelling and cutting short your trip, etc. Furthermore you decide if you want to cover a one-off holiday or lots of trips throughout the year.

To share with you an example, we considered the offers found at www.moneysupermarket.com/travelinsurance. This site gives us the comparison between different insurance companies and helps us to find the best offer.

In our example the parameters we entered were:
• single trip for two people (30 and 34 years old) to Australia, from the 20th of February to the 5th of March and the cheapest resulting travel insurance cost was £19.39. And, for instance, the cancellation trip insurance alone covers up to 3000 pounds. Other sections covered are:

1. Passport and Travel Documents
2. Medical and Other Expenses
3. Cancelling and Cutting Short Your Trip
4. Personal Cash
5. Personal Liability
6. Personal Belongings and Baggage

The countries included in this policy are: Albania, Andorra, Australia, Austria, Balearics, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Canary Islands, Corfu, Corsica, Crete, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Eire, Estonia, Faroe Islands, Finland, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Guernsey, Holland, Hungary, Ibiza, Iceland, Ireland, Isle of Man, Italy, Jersey, Kos (Greek Island), Lanzarote, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Madeira, Majorca, Malta, Minorca, Moldova, Monaco, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Rhodes, Romania, San Marino, Sardinia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tenerife, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Vatican City, Yugoslavia (Former).

The different companies give you plenty of options to customise your policy. You can choose additional covers (baggage, money, winter sports) and a number of excess options. You only pay for the cover you need. In the case of a house swap the most useful cover may be the trip cancellation one: it is likely that our flights are the most expensive part of your holidays given that we don’t have to pay for our accommodation.

Have good and safe home swap holidays.

The suggestion of the week is Amsterdam, a very popular destination, but always a special city to visit.

Centre of amusement, fun and the Prohibited , it is very famous for its coffee shops and the never ending night life. It is defined the Northern Venice because of its many canals.

It is well known also for the many cultural activities, the ancient and modern architectures and its museums (for example the Van Gogh Museum, Rijksmuseum, Anna Frank House, just to cite some).
We find not only museums but also cinemas, theatres, photography, typically Dutch museums as, for instance, the Scheepvaart Museum or the l’Houseboat Museum.

Many museums then have a special section for children. If you are very keen on museums you can easily get a day or week pass: this will give a cheaper access to several museums.

© Pictures of Amsterdam courtesy of Amsterdam.info.

These are only a few suggestion about the beautiful Amsterdam: start immediately to plan your house swap in order to get extraordinary and cheap holidays. House swapping is the best way to know the town and to save some money without giving up a marvellous vacation.
You can find more information about Amsterdam in the following web sites:
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/the-netherlands/amsterdam
http://www.timeout.com/amsterdam

Welcome back and happy New Year to everybody!

To start well our New Year I’d like to share with you an anecdote.

During these holidays I found myself looking desperately for a hotel for my parents who, late with their vacation planning, wanted to go for a little trip.
Well, despite the crisis I couldn’t find any hotel with availability in the surrounding mountain areas. Not even one free room, if not at an unacceptable price. You can’t imagine how much I desired that my parents had planned a house swap on time.
They would have solved their New Year’s Day and began under the sign of originality, trust and money saving. They could have slept without any hurry to have breakfast in the morning or organised a nice dinner for New Year’s Eve with calm and without spending a lot of money in hotels or expensive dinners at the restaurant. They would have gone anyway on holidays in a new place, maybe a big city or a nice and green village in the mountains. At the same time, they shouldn’t have worried about leaving the house empty because someone (the house swappers) would have been there to take care of it.

But my parents, as many other people, didn’t know about the existence of home swapping (obviously now they know).
The fact is that it doesn’t seem real having the possibility to go on holidays, sleeping in a comfortable, real house without having to pay a rent. But it’s the way it is: you give me your house and I give you mine for a short time.
This is house swapping, the solution for our next vacation.

A suggestion therefore: plan in time your home exchange. It will take some time and effort thinking of everything early, but in the end the experience and the money saving will surely be worth.
You can visit our house swap ADVANTAGES SECTION if the concept was new to you.
Anyway, we will be here giving help and advice, sharing ideas and tips in order to get you the best home exchange holidays.

If what we wrote yesterday hasn’t been enough, we’d just like to remind of the fact that house swapping is…

1. The cheapest way of travelling since you don’t have to pay anything for your accommodation, you can eat at home and often you can arrange a car exchange too (so you don’t have to hire one).
2. Liberating: you can escape the hotel time and space restrictions, you can cook and eat whenever and with whoever you like, wake up late without losing your breakfast chance and leave the flat at the best time for you on your last day.

So, in the end, home swapping is the most comfortable way of being on holidays: you are on holidays but you’re at home at the same time!

During this difficult time it seems that we all have to pay attention to how much we spend, what for and maybe we’d better forget about holidays too.

But to help you out I’d like to suggest another way of going on holidays without being ‘crippled by the crisis weight’.

Have you ever heard about house sitting?

“I have decided to be a house sitter. I have found that there are many folk who wish to leave their home and pets for periods whilst they travel, and they seek people like me to care for their house, their garden and their animals. For me it provides a place of peace, and plenty of time to write” . (Source: Diary of a House Sitter, http://housesitdiary.blogspot.com).

Yes, you understood correctly: also houses need to be taken care of, like dogs, plants, babies…

Many well-to-do families with equally comfortable houses often leave their house to some concierges. Now it seems quite trendy the habit of leaving the house (garden and animals included) to a person who will take care of it -precisely the house sitter- in return for a “change of place and air” or the possibility of living in a different, beautiful, maybe bigger, maybe luxury house or, whatever, to be able to go on even short holidays in another place, different from one’s own house. You can also earn some money in some cases.

However, apart from the house sitting news, if this is not your solution because you are a family or a couple –and this can be a more suitable solution for singles- you can always re-consider the home exchange option and start now to plan your economic, easy and comfortable house swap holidays!