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I received this email last week from ExchangeHomes.com members Bill and Bess.

Hi Anne
I’ve just read your post on 27th of May encouraging members to contact home exchange advertisers who’ve listed “Open to Offers” under their exchange destinations and I thought I should share Bill’s and my experiences from last summer.

We live in Oxford and had listed Spain, Italy, Jersey, Florida and Open to Offers as our destination selections.

In May we were contacted by Walt and Janine who lived in Morinville, a suburban community north of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Their son, a student at Oxford University was getting married to a local Oxford girl in July and they were looking for a home exchange so that they could make a real holiday out of their trip.

Their email was full of information about their town. Bill, who is golf and fishing mad was excited to see that the town was surrounded by golf courses and good trout fishing.

We were definitely interested.

An exchange of many more emails built upon our interest. Their home was delightful and although located in a small town of 6,000+ people, Edmonton was just 15 or 20 minutes down the road.

We decided why not? Never in a million years would we have actually listed our home swap destination as Morinville, Alberta; until a couple of weeks before we’d never heard of the place. But it certainly promised to be completely different, and Bill and I began getting a kick out of telling friends and neighbours our 2006 home exchange destination. Their blank stares were priceless!

We ended up exchanging with Walt and Janine for 18 days and loved every single minute of the trip. Their house lived up to all our expectations and was located in a lovely new neighbourhood. Walt’s brother and his wife met us at Edmonton International Airport and drove us to the house. Cars were included in the exchange and in between Bill’s golfing and fishing we managed to fit in a lot of trips, both into the surrounding area and south into Edmonton. I became good friends with Walt’s sister in law.

We began home exchanging in the year 2000 and our previous destinations had been Palm Beach - Florida, Almeria - Spain, Marseille - France, and Dunoon - Scotland. Our “Open to Offers” destination was as memorable as any of the previous ones.

Best wishes
Bess

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