We've finally booked our apartment in Paris, so if you were on the edge of your seat since the previous blog post (ha!) then that's all settled now. We found a place in Montparnasse just off the Rue Daguerre, which is a foodie paradise, they say. Of course, a week later our friends found an apartment for their year in Paris, and it is clear on the other side of the city, in the Batignolles area. A 35 minute Metro ride away. Yikes. That's going to make logistics challenging, but I guess it just means we'll have to say, "Meet us at the Louvre (or closest patisserie thereto)!"
Many people have asked me how I've found our places to stay. Well, of course, I found them all on the Inter-tubes. More specifically, I found more than half of them on Booking.com. We've used them before with good success, and I like their UI for the most part. We did another chunk through FlipKey. At the suggestion of friends, I used AirBnB to find the elusive Paris apartment. (I thought they only did couch surfing, which I wasn't comfortable doing, but you have the option of looking for whole apartments/houses.) And the one fancy hotel (in Carcassonne) I booked directly.
One thing I learned was that I could often find the same place on multiple sites, and that way sometimes get more pictures, more reviews, and sometimes different prices as well. Google Street View was also a great help in separating the wheat from the chaff.
We had some specific needs that helped concentrate the hunt:
Take all those requirements, add a dash of serendipity, throw in apartment owners whose vacancies may not coincide with the calendar shown on their web page, and you get many many many hours of searching to find 110 nights worth of lodging. I could write a book. Oh look, I just did.
Many people have asked me how I've found our places to stay. Well, of course, I found them all on the Inter-tubes. More specifically, I found more than half of them on Booking.com. We've used them before with good success, and I like their UI for the most part. We did another chunk through FlipKey. At the suggestion of friends, I used AirBnB to find the elusive Paris apartment. (I thought they only did couch surfing, which I wasn't comfortable doing, but you have the option of looking for whole apartments/houses.) And the one fancy hotel (in Carcassonne) I booked directly.
One thing I learned was that I could often find the same place on multiple sites, and that way sometimes get more pictures, more reviews, and sometimes different prices as well. Google Street View was also a great help in separating the wheat from the chaff.
We had some specific needs that helped concentrate the hunt:
- Internet: I always communicated with the owners about my need for free, reliable, high-speed Internet. I told them I'd be working online and Skyping for hours, so there'd be no surprises.
- Convenient, safe location: Needed to find places that we could get to without a car (except for the southern Italy week) and be convenient to get to sights and food shopping. I often used the Map view on the apartment search sites as my main filter.
- Work space: I need to work at night without keeping everyone else awake. And when I'm on Lync with my team, I really don't want to have to shush my family. So, I tried to find places that had a separate room for the kids to sleep away from wherever I'll be working. Best is to have 3 bedrooms and a 4th room to work in, but sometimes I had to settle for 2 rooms. Luckily the kids are young enough that sleeping on a pullout couch is an awesome treat! This requirement pretty much ruled out hotels for my work nights.
- Kitchen: Most places we're staying are apartments where we can cook to save money, so Wesley can enjoy cooking the local cuisine, and to make it convenient for us to eat whenever we want. With kids, that's a must. Also, if I found lots of potential places, I'd throw in a requirement for a washing machine, since we're packing light.
- Cost: Wesley is already in sticker shock over this trip. I set what I thought was a reasonable per night price for each city we were staying in, and then tried to stay under that. Of course, the longer you stay in one place, the cheaper the per-night cost. Cost was also a main filter I used on the apartment search sites and sure helped narrow down our options! (Just try finding a place for 4 people in Paris for under $200 a night, and you'll see what I mean.) I ended up with one splurge night (in a castle!) and one cheap week on an island in Croatia for $50/night (with a pool!).
- No smoking: Nothing ruins Wesley's night faster than staying in a smoke-smelling room. So, I tried to find places that advertise as No Smoking. No guarantees, of course.
- Cancellation policy: When planning a 4-month trip over the course of a year, there's always the chance that something can come up to change your plans. One of the first things I bought was trip insurance, but they're not going to cover us if we just change our minds. So, I tried to find places that had very liberal cancellation policies. This was especially likely for Booking.com places and hotels. With the FlipKey and AirBnB places, I will lose my deposit if our plans change.
- Decor: Sounds silly, but this was important. If the photos showed that the place was stuffed full of the owner's belongings, I worried that it would be hard to untangle our stuff from their stuff. (Last trip, I left all our prescription meds on a bookshelf and the rental company took 2 weeks to mail them to us.) I also shied away from places that showed R-rated posters on the walls, or clearly didn't bother to clean before taking the photos. Makes you wonder what they would be like as landlords.
- General awesomeness: That intangible quality that makes a place special. Reviews and ratings are helpful for this. I really don't want to stay in a boring Motel 6 kind of place when I'm on a trip. I want to stay in a place where the owner is kind, the location is great, and the architecture is typical of the area I'm visiting. And I want my family to say, "You rock!"
Take all those requirements, add a dash of serendipity, throw in apartment owners whose vacancies may not coincide with the calendar shown on their web page, and you get many many many hours of searching to find 110 nights worth of lodging. I could write a book. Oh look, I just did.