HomeAway from Home

Our family has a nickname: The Maximum Impact Family…  Whether it is the twin kindergarteners, the 10-year span from oldest to youngest, the gender split of 4 boys to 1 girl, the compulsive acquisition of dogs to our menagerie or just the instinctual pack mentality that takes over when you have too many animals under one roof, our family typically leaves a wide wake. We make it work in our home, which embraces the chaos under the design cover-term “eclectic.”  But on that rare occasion, when someone we know really well, or doesn’t know us nearly well enough, invites us to their home, or we go on a trip and stay with friends or at a hotel, the wake has a tendency to leave a lasting impression! We should really have “no wake” buoys that we lay out on lawns and hallways of the homes and hotels we visit in hopes that the visual queue will keep us in check.

A dinner at a friend’s house, or a week-long family vacation is one thing… but a year of taking the traveling circus on the road is a whole different problem to solve for. Since this is a gap year and not a vacation – such an obvious distinction that I am not even going to go into the differences – we need to figure out how “home” goes mobile. There are so many flavors of vacation rentals, homes, homestays and inns to choose from. We’re heavy vacation rental travelers, primarily because we don’t need to pack as many “no wake” buoys, but also because we love to cook, hang out and have space to spread out. Each country has it’s set of options, typical accommodations and opportunities to connect to the culture in a different way. So, as we go through the discovery process and start booking our homes away from home, we’ll review the various travel tools, accommodations and resources we come in contact with. And, if you have any favorites of your own, PLEASE let us know!

Our first pass on finding homes away from home was, of course, HomeAway. There are some GREAT options around the world, but we had to start with the rock that the rest of the trip has been built around – Bali! Not the first destination, but the longest stay, our house choice had to be awesome. We found this Balinese villa in Ubud, the cultural heart of this legendary island, to explore, create art and feed monkeys:

We love the way owners engage with you right from the inquiry form on HomeAway, helping you with questions, suggestions and the booking process. It’s also helpful to explain who we are and make sure there is not some huge collection of glass art or priceless antiques, both of which would attract my boys like moths to a flame. This particular property is maintained by caretakers who sound even better than the actual structure, so we’re very excited about our first official HomeAway from home. Reserving the property after a delightful chat and a check on reviews was easy and painless. I’m already dreaming of the memories we’ll rack up in our Balinese home…