Why an Airbnb may be the way forward on your next trip

 Searching for accommodation for your next holiday?

So you’ve booked your flights, next step? Accommodation. Targeting a combination of tourists and business-travelers, hotels are undoubtedly the easiest and most luxurious way to travel, but personally, unless a resort holiday is what you want, we would book an Airbnb over a hotel 90% of the time. Yes, there is a little more research that needs to go into booking an Airbnb over a hotel (pictures, location, reviews of the property as well as reviews of the host themselves) but, staying in one can be so much more rewarding than staying in a conventional hotel and, for around the same price as a hostel, should definitely be strongly considered whatever your budget. 

Here’s why…

Location:

The general consensus is that hotels are dominant in ‘tourist’ areas, but what if you don’t want to be surrounded by tourist amenities? With a wealth of options that span the entirety of the city (spots in Mexico City range from city-centre flats to out of town villas), Airbnb properties ensure that you are never too far from anything you want to see. The fact that these are houses owned by locals also means that you have a higher likelihood of finding a bed on your more remote travels, something never more clearly seen than in the Scottish Highlands where a brief look in the area surrounding Smoo Cave shows a solitary SYHA hostel that seems to be fully booked from now until eternity or several close Airbnb options.

Think this dog fancies a game of fetch?

Price:

Now of course there are going to be luxury apartments on Airbnb in every city that are comparable to the prices of hotels, but in general it is fairly clear that prices on Airbnb are much more reasonable than their hotel counterparts. Take Edinburgh for example. A single night in the ‘cheap’ Ibis hotel in the city centre ranges between £65 to £130 for a room while an Airbnb would set you back £70 for an entire flat, fitting 4 guests. Add to that the convenience of having full access to amenities (a host in Memphis provided unlimited ice-tea in the fridge among other things) and a kitchen and the choice becomes obvious! Not only is this great as it saves you some pennies in your pocket, but it also frees up a lot more cash for you to spend throughout your holiday on the things that actually matter, the experiences!

 

Where better to relax under the stars than this High Desert House in California?

Expertise:

So this one will change depending on if you’re renting out an entire flat or just a room, but the expertise of your host cannot be ignored, after all they’re locals in the place your visiting! While all hotels will have a concierge service/ office staff there to assist you with your questions, you’ll rarely find them recommending anything different to the guides designed for tourists. Your Airbnb host? They’re experts in where the locals go. Best coffee shop to relax in? They’ve been there. Non-tourist bars? They drink there. A bipartisan opinion on an attraction? They’re your best bet. It is often when you go off the beaten path that you discover the heart and soul of the city and who best to show you the way than someone who is an active part of the local culture.

Dairsie Castle is where you go to live out your Game of Thrones fantasies?

Uniqueness:

Don’t get me wrong, there are some beautiful hotels around the world, but unless you are showing me the Hilton in Hawaii (it has penguins in the foyer, it wins in everything), they all kind of look and feel the same: glass structures with floor upon floor of corridor, each housing countless near-identical rooms, there’s just no character to them. That is where Airbnb steps in. Aye, many may be standard apartments but look beyond those and you’ll find yourself with the opportunity of staying inside a campsite in the desert, a cave-dwelling used in Pirates of the Caribbean, a dog-shaped house and even a Scottish castle… How many people can say that they’ve slept in a medieval castle?! 

This house is literally all you ever wanted as a kid...

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Travel with a Purpose: El Camino de Santiago

The Camino de Santiago. The Way of St. James. “A Really Long Walk”. 

The route has been called by many names, but the journey to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain has been around for centuries. Officially the third most visited Christian site in the world, the popularity of El Camino has exploded in recent years, taking advantage of an upsurge in adventure-seekers and offering an experience unlike any other trip I’ve been on.

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It’s going to hurt…

Now this may seem like an obvious fact, but it’s one that you must see. The Camino is not easy. You are essentially carrying enough clothes and necessities on your back for anywhere between a week (El Camino Ingles) and a month (El Camino Frances), all the while walking an average of seven hours a day, much of it on hilly mountain tracks.

… but it’s so, so worth it.

Stereotypical we know, but believe me, walking into the square in front of the Cathedral in Santiago is a feeling unlike any other. Described as magic by some and addictive by all, the otherworldly feeling of accomplishment and bliss that you feel as you realise that you have completed the journey will instantly make you want to do another.

Light streaming through the arch of an abandoned monastery, somewhere in Northern Portugal

Slum it!

In recent years, the huge expansion experienced by the Camino has meant that it has developed some more ‘comfortable’ arrangements including nicer hotels and paradors for peregrinos to sleep in as well as taxi services that take your rucksacks to your various nightly stops but honestly, unless you’re desperate, don’t do it. So much of the Camino experience takes place in the albergues. These cheap hostels may be devoid of many creature comforts (if it has plugs and warm water be thankful!) and there will always, ALWAYS, be a snorer who keeps the entire room awake, but that is one of the best parts of the trip. It is at these hostels where you create bonds with your fellow walkers, forming groups to go to the bars, sharing tales of unique moments that have happened along the way and, ultimately, goes some way towards creating the community vibe that makes saying goodbye at the end of the trip somewhat harder than it should be.

The Camino becomes a way of life to many of the locals who live on the route, Galicia

Don’t be a stranger.

So much of the joys of the Camino are because of the company you pick up along the way. Countless a rainy day has become a blissfully enjoyable walk largely thanks to the stories of my fellow walkers. These are not only your main source of entertainment along the way (lets face it your iphone is not going to last eight hours) but also encouragement to ward off the pain. Not to mention purveyors of information, on my last Camino I turned a corner to see a group of ten pilgrims all offering different forms of aid to a poor girl suffering a blister! Say hi to your fellow walkers and I can guarantee that your final photo album will be filled with random strangers.

Waking the fortress that separates Spain and Portugal

Learn the lingo.

No, I don’t mean walk around with a Spanish phrasebook in your pocket (although it would certainly be helpful with the route cutting through mostly rural areas where the majority of people will speak minimal, if any, English), but simply “Buen Camino”. The phrase, literally meaning “have a good Camino” will be imprinted in your memory by the end of the second day. Repeated at every coffee stop, church, hostel, shop and restaurant as well as coming at you from every local and pilgrim you see, the phrase begins to mean everything from “hello”, to “goodbye” and “have a nice day”.

Don't ignore photo opportunities, Spanish-Portuguese border crossing

Enjoy the scenery, Galicia

 

Finally, enjoy the journey!

Perhaps more so than any other form of ‘tourism’ – if it can indeed be called that, the Camino is all about the journey and not the destination so take advantage of it. Yes it isn’t a walk in the park but it’s not a race, enjoy it. Take a break at a fountain to take in the artwork, stop off at a small town to pose for a picture in front of a statue or monument, wander around a church, have a drink of the local wine and treat yourself, have that extra slice of cake! Santiago de Compostela is beautiful but it will be the dingy hostels, beautiful scenery and unique characters that dominate your stories as you bore your friends back home rather than pictures of the finish line.

Go out and explore the surroundings of your overnight stays, street festival in Pontevedra

Lost is Fun

- Wander Lost -

What can I say? I'm a person who loses things: from USB sticks to house keys, headphone cables to Oyster Cards (for all of you Londoners out there, you're not the only ones) and travel itineraries. Yet, unlike the other items on the list, I’ve always found that the lack of a concrete plan leads to a much more thrilling adventure, to the point that I now make a conscious plan to not micro-manage my trips.

We’ve all been there, your bags are packed (mentally at least), you’ve yelp’d all of the foodie attractions, 500px’d best the snap locations and written all over your printed-out landmark sheets from TripAdvisor. The only thing missing? Some time to sit-back and take it all in.

All too often abroad I see other travellers running circles around me, rushing from attraction to attraction to tick it off their list, battling wind and rain to ‘complete’ the city, too focused on seeing everything to enjoy it. My advice? Lose the itinerary, get yourself lost, wander, randomly engage with locals.

As someone who loves coffee I often find myself attracted to the various cute coffee shops a city has to offer, preferring to indulge in a session of people-watching and chatting to the barista about his/her favourite spots in the city over charging about in the rain.

I find that people forget that about travelling, that the vibe of the location is just as central to the culture as the architecture. Don’t get me wrong, each city has its must-sees: London has Big Ben, New York contains the Statue of Liberty and no visit to Barcelona is complete without a cheeky picture in front of the Sagrada Familia, but, beyond that, you could fill a two week vacation at each  location and not see every attraction on your TripAdvisor list so remember to relax, take a break, don’t just charge through the cobbled streets of Barcelona’s Old Town taking pictures just to be able to say you were there, sit down at one of the bars along the road and order a jug of sangria, the science museum will still be standing tomorrow.

I’m generally terrible at taking my own advice, but upon returning from a recent visit to China, it struck me as to how different my trip would have been had I forced myself to go through with all of the activities I’d researched. By slowing down and spend more time communicating with the locals I was able to take part in a traditional tea ceremony at a tea plantation (rather than it just be a picture stop-off before moving on), get filmed for a Chinese docu-series in a temple up a hill (still not entirely sure how that one came about) and, by just getting lost instead of micro-managing, was able to find the hidden gems glossed over by tourists.

Love your experience, not just the break

This is the phrase that I’d want to leave y’all with at the end of the first post. Love your experience. A holiday isn’t just about getting away from school or work, it’s a stress-free adventure. Remember to come back to the real world with more than pictures of pretty scenes in your camera, but with a smile having genuinely loved it.

Thanks for reading my first post (things will improve I promise). We at Latte.Wanderer have some fun plans for future articles including our upcoming ‘Visit Like a Local’ series of city guides based on recommendations of attractions, restaurants and experiences from people who live in the city!

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Until next time, I'm off to grab a coffee..