A month in Europe. It reminds me of the stories of old when people would “Go Abroad” for months at a time as it was so difficult to travel. Seeing a town for 2 days wasn’t even possible nor desirable. Our trip has been a bit of a whirlwind, but I have to admit that I like it that way.
The whole adventure started when I remembered the idea of house exchanges. With our home in Costa Rica being a sought after place, I put it on an exchange website. And the offers started rolling in. Funny thing though, most of the places people offered exchange were not where I wanted to go. Since the CR house rents really well, I wasn’t willing to let people stay without a great option for us. So then came the Venice offer. A week in Venice for CR? Yes Please.
The owner of the Venice house came to CR in February last year with 4 other people and really had a great time. She said we were good to go with her house and she’d send us information a couple of weeks before our trip. So we purchased our plane tickets and started securing lodging in other places we wanted to travel. We ended up going from Venice area to Switzerland via train. We wanted to take the kids hiking in the Swiss Alps, which did not disappoint. We stayed in Meiringen (I can’t say it’s worth staying in), Grindelwald and then Murren, totally a week. From there we had a change of plans and headed to France and then onto Spain.
Venice: For all it’s popularity, Venice remains one of the most charming cities. It seems to be a challenge to take a bad picture - the lighting, the charming architecture, the variety in people. Our house we exchanged for was really nice, but a little difficult to “make ourselves at home” in. There were 3 floors, each with a bedroom and on the second floor there was a small kitchen with an eating bar. There was no living room nor dining room. There was no outside terrace. Essentially there was no place for us to hang out as a family - which was really unfortunate. Strike one for the idea of exchanging.
Balin saved the stay in Venice by having booked a private tour guide/bike company for our stay. Every day we would walk 20 minutes to outside the city where our private guide, van and bikes would meet us. He would drive us to a spot and we would spend the day biking through the country side. It was delightful. Every day there was a wine stop and lunch and a cultural interest, which was absolutely lovely. We would be out most of the day, arriving at home tired and hungry. Our evenings would mostly be spent going to a fantastic restaurant and then to bed. It was truly an amazing way to see the area and I would highly recommend it. In regards to the house exchange, I don’t think I would do it again. For the amount of $ we rent our house out for, I could have gotten a really nice house more conducive to our families lifestyle. But, you don’t know until you try.
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