Home Exchange Around The World
Home Exchange Blog
Over the past week we’ve been talking with Joe and Mary, long time members of ExchangeHomes.com who phoned to tell us that they had recently returned home from a “home exchange world tour”.
We were intrigued. Over the years a lot of our members have used their initiative to string a couple of home swaps together, enabling them to visit different parts of a county, or maybe two countries in Europe, but a world tour? This was something far more adventurous. Joe was happy to explain.
Back in March 2005, he and Mary took early retirement (I believe they are both around 60), with plans to travel throughout the upcoming year. Their home is in Fort Myers, Florida and their first exchange (for two weeks), was with another couple in Newport, Rhode Island.
From there they flew to the UK where they swapped homes for three weeks with a family in Hastings, then for two weeks with a man in Edinburgh. They flew from Edinburgh to Paris and began the first half of a hospitality exchange with a lady in Versailles. This lady is planning to spend two weeks with Joe and Mary in Florida later this year.
So that they could enjoy the scenery, Joe and Mary took the train to their next destination, Innsbruck in Switzerland where they stayed for two weeks. Then they moved on to Pescara, Italy (again, by train).
Next stop was Yalikavak, Turkey where they stayed for two weeks in the vacation home of an English couple. From there they took a long flight to Cape Town, South Africa. Here they did a home swap with a man we know very well - he’s been an ExchangeHomes.com member for many years and we’ve enjoyed receiving a lot of emails from him describing his own trips.
After two weeks in Cape Town, Joe and Mary indulged themselves and took a 38-day cruise to Australia on the Holland American Line. The ship stopped at a whole list of places including Mombasa, the Maldives, Singapore, and Indonesia.
Once in Australia they did home swaps with families in Sydney, Perth and Brisbane. This took up ten more weeks.
They then flew to New Zealand where they swapped homes in Christchurch and spent Christmas 2005 and the New Year with an old friend in Auckland.
Joe and Mary left New Zealand on January 5th and flew to Hawaii, staying for two weeks each in Hanapepe and Hilo. The highlight of their stay was a helicopter flight into the crater of Kilauea. They emailed us lots of pictures!
After Hawaii, Joe and Mary did home exchanges with Woodland Hills (California), Jalasco (Mexico), and finally Dallas (Texas) before arriving home again in Florida early in April.
One obvious question we asked, was how on earth did they manage to successfully arrange so many home exchanges, and how did they cope with all the families coming and going from their home in Fort Myers while they were thousands of miles away?
Joe admitted that the actual home exchanges took almost two years to set up. He said Hawaii had been the most difficult to arrange, first finding homes with consecutive dates and second because no-one in Hawaii seemed at all interested in visiting Florida. He estimated he had sent out in excess of two hundred emails just making initial inquiries for the trip.
As for dealing with the arrival of 16 consecutive families in their home, Joe and Mary said that was the easy part. A neighbor took care of the keys and was always on hand to give advice; Molly Maid cleaned the house every week, and they already had a garden service. Joe admitted he kept in contact with the all his exchange partners and his neighbor by email, but other than a few minor problems (electric kettle died in September; the family from Perth broke the tv remote control), there were no issues to resolve.
It’s an incredible story, and one I intend to refer members to in the future whenever they seem to be in need of inspiration while trying to set up a home swap with just one location.
Joe and Mary apologized that they had allowed their ExchangeHomes.com membership to expire while they were away. They promised to renew again early in 2007, but they have no further travel plans for the remainder of this year.
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