Is it only easy for people in major cities to do a lot of home exchange? The story of our latest swap may provide an illustration of the options for potential exchangers who live off the beaten tourist track.
Last summer we watched Independence Day fireworks from the window of a hotel room in coastal Connecticut. We were on our way to the Mystic Aquarium. Decades earlier I had stayed in a nearby hotel while visiting the Aquarium with my own parents.
Now I was about to share this experience with my own children. Our goal was to add to the photographs that line the walls of our bathroom. In each one, a family member is posed with a large wild animal of some sort. Above the soap dispenser my late mother grins while the ocelot-in-residence at a crazy Northern California new age resort called Isis Oasis nuzzles her neck (don�t worry, the ocelot had nothing to do with her demise). On another wall my family swims with dolphins in Hawaii. There is another shot of me petting a lion cub in Las Vegas.
At Mystic Aquarium there is an opportunity to enjoy supervised play time with penguins. Proceeds help the Aquarium�s educational mission. We have no photos in the bathroom of flightless marine birds, rendering our collection hopelessly incomplete.
We spent the next day at the Aquarium. Our children were fascinated with the baby Beluga whale, the pet-the-ray tank and the seals. But the penguins� dance card was full and we left bereft of our prize penguin photo.
This time we are planning ahead. We have already booked two Penguin Encounters for Memorial Day weekend in May. And this time we hope the experience will be very different because we are trying to set up a home exchange in the Mystic, Connecticut area.
We are communicating with one of this blog�s readers who has a stately, renovated 1800�s house just ten miles from the Aquarium. If this swap works out, our next holiday weekend at the Aquarium will be completely different.
The hotel�s amenities included a continental breakfast, free local calls, a large room with two queen-size beds and a public hot tub. We booked the room on a hotel discount site and paid only $99 per night, plus tax.
My children have only one parent who is a "morning person". When they jumped out of bed, wide awake, at 6 in the morning, I had the fun task of dressing them in the dark and hustling them out of the hotel room until a more humane hour of the morning. In a hotel room, bedtime and wake-up time are controlled by the needs of the least flexible family members.
By contrast, the swap home has a Wii video game console where I can park the children if they get up at the crack of dawn. There is a separate bedroom for us, each of our children and their grandfather, which means the kids won't necessarily wake each other up. One thing that wakes my children when we stay in a hotel is anyone using the en suite bathroom. The swap home has two bathrooms. There is also a large, renovated gourmet kitchen, a game room featuring a ping-pong table and billiards, a private hot tub, garage parking, washer/dryer and kayaks which can be launched just steps from the house.
As a child, my memory of the trip to Mystic involved sharing a bed with my fidgety sister while my father snored loudly in the living room of our hotel suite. My own kids may recall playing ping pong, picking which room they want of the swap home�s four bedrooms, and playing in the swap home�s huge back yard.
The exchange family has two young teenagers. Visiting the Big City from their suburban New England home is sure to be an interesting experience I wonder how they will enjoy having the Empire State Building as their bedrooms� night light. The exchange family will certainly be more comfortable having a bedroom for the parents and a separate bedroom for each child.
Memorial Day weekend is a peak time for travelers to visit New York City. Our potential swap partners, who would no doubt need two rooms for themselves and their two teens would face a $1000 or higher hotel bill, and huge restaurant bills if they chose to visit our city the traditional way. We look forward to welcoming them to our home, particularly because their kids are eager to give our new kittens lots of attention.
Our possible swap partners live in a nice town, right on the ocean. Their home is lovely and the town looks cute. However, they are a too far from both New York City and Boston to lure travelers to those major destinations. And few people would think to select their hometown as a first choice spot to vacation.
But the exchangers highlight area attractions in their listing, like the nearby luxury casinos and the Aquarium. They also have the advantage of a low inventory of swap homes in their area. Someone who wants to travel to their town has few home exchange options.
Hopefully, home exchange is going to make this year�s visit to the Mystic Aquarium a completely different experience than last year�s hotel stay. I�ll be sure to let you know.
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