BellaOnline Forums Travel and Culture European Travel Renting a vacation home in Europe

Does anyone know of any reliable websites with information about renting a vacaton home in Europe? Or has anyone had experience with this?

We were thinking of staying someplace for up to a month and I thought it would be more fun to stay in a house or apartment rather than a hotel. I'd appreciate any tips.

Thanks,
Joan

You're right, staying in an apartment is much better for any time longer than a week.

www.venere.com has some apartment rental information.

Hi

www. slowtravel.com is a good website for Europe, and for Spain www.toprural.com.

It is so difficult to choose as their are so many websites out there.

I have a house to rent in Spain and most of the websites just take your money to advise.

There are no checks, no standards and for most of them you don't even have to be legally registered.

That's why I reccommend toprural, the houses that advertise on there have to be legally checked and paying their taxes!

I've had some decent luck with Interhome. The have sites in a number of countries, and from there you can navigate to thousands of listings of houses and appartments.

I rented a house in southern France through them, and an appartment in the Swiss Alps. Both times I was satisfied with the service and things were simple. The advantage of working through an agency (there are many others) is that if something goes wrong, there's someone there who can take care of it, often in a foreign language.

Have a great vacation!
Leyla

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I prefer to travel this way. I spent 3 months in England in a rented home. We got to fix our own food and really feel what it was like to LIVE there.
p
I have heard some people do a house swap kind of thing. They register their home to be used and somehow people are matched up. I talked to one lady who lived near Oxford England who had spent time in San Francisco as well as further South in California while someone was staying in her home. Their accomodations didn't cost them anything, so their only expense was their air fare and rental car while they were there.

I haven't done this in Europe but we have rented large vacation homes in the US and had family reunions there. Everybody chipped in to pay for it, plus bought food and helped fix it. It was a wonderful vacation!

I can't remember the name of the movie I once watched about two young women who were bored with their lives. One lived in Europe and one lived in California. Somehow they connected thru the internet and rather than spending money on rentals they just traded residence for the summer. Is there anything like that available in real life? That would be so cool to trade homes with someone in a country you want to visit. Maybe I will look into that myself to see if I can find someone in Ireland who would be interested.

The movie was the Holiday with Kate Winslett. It was a terrific movie! I would love to do that. Of course, they kind of ended up exchanging lives as well as residences.

Quite a big company in England is called Country Holidays although they also do city rentals too - we have used them several times - London vacation rentals are very popular - try English Heritage and the National Trust for the peachiest period properties (not the cheapest though lol - Stately Homes etc included!) London fun rentals could include things like apartments in castles, gaols, palaces and other old historic houses!