House Exchanges: The Best Way to Travel with Kids
Vacations with kids are expensive. And let’s face it: for parents, vacations with kids aren’t exactly relaxing.
The author and children, Versailles, 2009. Photo: Patrick Perkins
Vacations with kids are expensive. And let’s face it: for parents, vacations with kids aren’t exactly relaxing. But, I’ve found, they can be pretty magical — and even relatively affordable.
When we had our sixth child, I was afraid we’d never be able to travel as a family. Just a restaurant meal for eight people is expensive, even with kid’s menus and everyone drinking water; multiply that by three times however many vacation days, and that’s a small fortune right there. And then, the hotels — they’re not only expensive, but also logistically difficult when you have to book at least two rooms.
Then a friend suggested that we try a house exchange. She was a member of HomeLink, an organization that facilitates trading houses with families all over the world. She’d been swapping her Manhattan apartment every summer for places in Europe, South America, and Asia for more than twenty years.
She explained that budget-wise, all you had to worry about was airfare plus a relatively small amount set aside for museums and other excursions. She always bought her food at local grocery stores and cooked her meals at the house where she was staying. You have to eat anyway, she explained, so it’s not like that’s an extra expense. Once she said that, we realized this might be an option that we could actually afford.
But we had questions. What about valuables? What about privacy? She told us to lock up anything we were nervous about — but also explained that the house exchange community is a self-selecting group, and swapping houses is an exercise in mutual trust. In her decades of using the service, she’d never had a single problem.
We went on the website to explore. (You can look at listings for free, but once you want to list your own house, you pay an annual subscription fee.) We scrolled through listings of all types all over the world, from studio apartments in big cities, to tract homes in nondescript suburbs, to large farmhouses in more rural areas.
We filtered our search so that the site would only display places big enough for our family — and then we got very excited when it seemed like this could actually work. We subscribed, listed our house, and sent out queries. When you list your house, you can specify what times of year you’re available, and whether or not you’ll allow children or pets or smoking or anything else. You can also request care for your pets (we’ve taken care of fish, a turtle, cats, and rabbits on our various exchanges) or opt for another plan (we always board our dog with a trusted sitter).
Once you find someone interested in exchanging, both parties sign an agreement provided by the service that specifies dates and lists vital logistics like car insurance details and how you’re going to exchange keys. After that, all you have to do is figure out how you’re getting there.
We ended up making our first exchange with a French family from a village just west of Versailles. Their quirky, comfortable house was on a quiet road on the edge of beautiful farmland, but it only took us a half hour to drive into Paris. We stayed for three weeks, alternating each day between city visits (the Louvre, the Arc de Triomphe, etc.) and countryside explorations (Giverny, Fontainebleau, Normandy). We shopped at the village boulangerie as well as at a large nearby supermarket, eating breakfast and dinner at home nearly every night.
For lunch every day, we packed a picnic to take with us on our adventures. We ate our baguette sandwiches and fruit sitting on the quais of the Seine and on the steps of Chartres cathedral and at a pocket-handkerchief park near the abbey of Mont Saint-Michel and in the gardens surrounding Versailles. No one ever got tired of our picnics. I love living like a local — shopping at the markets, getting to know less touristy parts of the area as well as the more famous places, and seeing what real life in foreign countries is like.
It’s customary (but not mandatory) to share a first or last meal with your exchange family. Once we got back home, we had dinner with our French family before they left for the airport. Amidst trading stories of our various exploits, we confessed we’d broken one of their children’s small toys; they admitted in turn that they’d shattered a wineglass. And that? Is the most damage we’ve ever incurred in all of the exchanges that have followed.
That amazing trip was the first of several. We’ve never set out looking for someplace grand to stay, since we’re going to be out and about all day, anyway — but we’ve been pretty spoiled. On our second trip, we went to London and stayed in a beautiful brick semi-detached house in the suburb of Twickenham.
Next came a trip to Burgundy, where we were lucky enough to stay in a 16-bedroom mini-chateau surrounded by vineyards and wheat fields. Last summer, we exchanged with a family who lived just outside of Blois in the Loire Valley. (Yes, we go to France a lot.) Their beautiful stone mansion sat in an acre of walled gardens with a swimming pool and terrace for dining where we ended up eating most of our meals.
The author’s husband with four of their six kids, Blois, 2017.
Another great thing about house exchanges is the flexibility you have as a family. The toddler needs a nap? No problem. Don’t want to pack a ton of stuff? We usually pack 3–4 outfits each and then do laundry every couple of days. Feel like taking a breather from sightseeing and just playing in the back yard or watching movies? Or maybe the weather is bad, and what sounds best is cozying up to the fireplace and working a jigsaw puzzle together and eating snacks all day? Easily done, with no pressure from hotel housekeeping, and lots of extra room to roam around.
Exchanges can be arranged for any length of time that’s mutually agreeable. We tend toward three-week trips, which give us plenty of time to get over jet lag and explore our surroundings at a leisurely pace. Cars are often included in exchange agreements, but it’s a rare family that has a vehicle big enough for us. In two of our French exchanges, we rented a car, but the year we went to London, we used the family’s small Volkswagen Polo for grocery trips and took the trains everywhere else.
HomeLink also provides options for hospitality exchanges or non-simultaneous exchanges. A few years ago, an Australian family got in touch with us and asked whether we’d be willing to host them for a few days. We have a small guest house on our property, so we were happy to have them use it as a home base while they traveled around California. We had a couple of meals with them and would visit with them in the evenings when our kids were all in the pool together. They were lovely, and while we don’t have any immediate plans to travel Down Under, we know that if and when we do, we’ll have a place to stay with people we like and trust.
A couple of summers ago, we weren’t able to travel for various reasons, but we did set up a HomeLink youth exchange for one of our daughters, who was fifteen at the time. She spent three weeks with a family in Versailles who had a daughter her age, and then both girls flew to the States and the French girl stayed with us for three weeks. The girls got very close and have remained good friends through the magic of social media.
This summer, we’re going back to the UK. Our 14-year-old is obsessed with the Beatles, but he barely remembers our Twickenham trip because he was only six at the time. We’re staying in Oxfordshire, which is a great central location from which to visit London, Cambridge, Stratford, Bath, and much more. We’ll then take the train on a two-day pilgrimage to Liverpool.
Our older children are grown now and can’t always come with us these days. But I expect my husband and I will continue to do house exchanges for years to come, even when all our kids are out on their own.
The author and kids, Chenonceau, 2017. Photo: Patrick Perkins
This all might read like a commercial for HomeLink, but I don’t get anything from them for writing this. I know there are other house swap sites out there, but HomeLink is the one we know and trust. If you want to read more about our various trips, I’ve often summarized them in serial posts on my blog. Any questions about house exchanges? Feel free to leave a comment, and I’d be happy to answer.