How to share your way to a Costa Brava getaway
Swapping our apartment for getaways near and far has changed our lives.
We greeted the New Year from bed, awaking to the warm glow of the sun rising over the ocean. Light filtered in our windows through the trees outside and set the birds singing. Not just that day, but every morning for two weeks we watched dawn break above the waves from under two feather duvets. It’s amazing what sharing makes possible.
In what felt like an act of powerful magic, reality transformed by incantation into fantasy, we swapped our Barcelona apartment for a flat in the seaside town of Lla Franc for 14 days — from before Christmas into the New Year. But in this case, we were the sorcerer, and our wand was a simple URL: HomeExchange.com.
Part of the joy, admittedly, is that this spell cost basically nothing. Yes, we pay a yearly membership fee, $175. But compared to this two-week stay, our fifth exchange of 2023, that is effectively nothing. We have spent nearly two months in strangers’ homes since signing up last year, which comes to about $3 a night. Aside from occasional payments for firewood or a prearranged cleaning, it has not cost us another penny.
The more subtle pleasure is the feeling of being at home. These are beloved spaces, full of life and the imprint of their owners. We’ve stayed in some sparsely furnished rental units, but most of our swaps leave us feeling not like we are visiting a place, but that we are members of it.
And yet we are also pampered guests. We have arrived to find bottles of wine and cava, fridges stocked with eggs and pasta, and once in Florence a panettone to celebrate the New Year. Hosts have shared drinks with us, picked us up from train stations, driven us to bus stations. We’ve stayed in a gorgeously minimalist Paris apartment and a Belgian attic that felt like a treehouse.
It’s been, in short, a totally different way of traveling. I write all this in the hope that, as you have likely guessed, you too will sign up. Not because I’m hoping to benefit, but because I’m certain you will.
Exchanges have changed us as travelers. Yes, freed from paying for travel, we now travel more frequently. Yet we also travel slower. We stay in one place, usually for a week, and live as semi-locals, visiting as widely as desired but returning home each day. We shop at local markets, pick up regional foods, cook more at home. We might rush around seeing sights, but may just take the rest we need. Often we do not even travel very far away, because when you go deep there is so much more to see.
This past trip marked the beginning of our second year on Home Exchange. We signed up after booking a trip to Italy, and after much searching landed stays in Rome and Florence. Next it was Sevilla in the spring. In the summer, the site made possible a month-long escape from the Spanish heat, spent in the Netherlands, and bookended by stops — this is starting to feel gratuitous — in Paris and Belgium. Now we’re in the Costa Brava.
That list of destinations makes my head spin, and perhaps yours too. But that’s what’s possible. Nor is it simply a European phenomenon, requiring a place in some desired international city. A dear friend — whose enthusiastic endorsements of Home Exchange I ignored, much to my loss — for years parlayed a home in the hills of Sebastopol, CA into stays around the world. (Have no idea where that is? Exactly my point.)
I listed all those destinations to get your attention, to emphasize the potential delights. Yet this is not just about vacations, but about sharing. This joy, those daily sunsets, were made possible by exchanging what we have to share for what someone else can also spare.
Two of the most well-known tech companies on the planet — Airbnb and Uber — started with that idea, and then strayed. I’ve used and appreciated both, yet I’ve also seen how they have upended communities around the globe: driven shortages of long-term apartments in many cities, pushed whole sectors into unstable gig work, congested traffic and driven up pollution. The original vision has been deserted, even perverted.
Uber and Airbnb demonstrate how the pull of the status-quo, of exchanging money for services, can seem irresistible. There is a place for that. But we should make more room for sharing, for enriching our lives by swapping what we already have. Every exchange is a reminder that we can all benefit when we share. That’s what dawned on me while watching the sun come up in the Costa Brava.
What’s your favorite sharing story?
drop | Sign up. Join a sharing site. It could be Home Exchange, or another platform. Ask friends for recommendations — and sign up codes.
ripple | Try it. Do your first exchange — and tell your friends. Hopefully you liked it.
Night Train Through Inner Mongolia
Now the child is a runny-nosed stranger you've finally decided to share your seat with, and the whole thing keeps heaving into the dark. The child sleeps unsweetly hunched against you, your side is slowly stinging, he has wet himself, so you do not move at all. I know you. You sit awake, baffling about a quirky faith, and do not shift until morning. This is why you are blessed, I think, and usually chosen.
– Anthony Piccione
Found at poets.org.
This newsletter is a collective project. Each issue is improved by the thoughtful feedback of my editor in chief, Roshni Kavate (who also contributed one of the photos), and my proofreader, Steve Kay. All errors are mine alone.
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