A house or a hotel – which is better?
For most people the end of summer holidays means school, duties, clouds, rain, etc. But for some it’s only the beginning of some time off. Now there are tolerable temperatures in “the hot countries”, the prices are better and October/November aren’t the nicest months to spend in Poland…
Autumn trips are a great idea for those who don’t have kids yet, don’t go to school, don’t study or… have little kids that are not bound by duties such as school, 1st September, school holidays, Christmas breaks, etc. For the last few years we’ve been going for holidays in the winter or in autumn. Earlier we combined it with New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day as nothing is better than the breakfast on 1st January at a sunny terrace 🙂 Lately we started travelling in November in order to skip the most awful month of the year (in my opinion at least)…
… because November is often grey, wet, cold and nobody remembers about golden Polish autumn (if it was present that year), let alone the holiday madness. And there’s still a lot of time before Christmas. The only thing that makes the situation better is hot chocolate… a warm blanket… evenings filled with movies… and a book. But a trip somewhere far, where the sun is shining, the beach is warm and the sky blue is a much better way to cope with autumn…
This is for those of you who are like us and like to colour up their November, September (such as yesterday) and October greyness a bit, as well as for those who are precautious and are already planning next year’s holidays. Here’s our guide, which will show you why a house is better than booking a room in a hotel!
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not going to tell you that travelling with a child is bad and sitting at home is the best idea! I won’t be doing so in the winter either. But I’ll try to convince you that renting a home for holidays is much better than booking a room in the hotel.
I recommend it to everybody, especially those who travel with a child… it gets even better if you travel with a child/children and with some company.
“once upon a time” in Cadaques, Spain 2011
It doesn’t mean that I don’t like hotels. Actually I do. I love beautiful little ones with a soul and some magic. That make you want to stay forever, with rooms that are so beautiful and beds that are so comfy, that you don’t even want to get out. Ones with gorgeous restaurants. I have a few new favourites in this category such as Vincent’s in Kazimierz Dolny or Gaładuś Inn in Dusznica, close to Sejny. I like such places for their atmosphere, delicious food and fantastic rooms.
I sometimes even like hotel-behemoths. They’re big and rarely charming, but have 500 swimming pools and 1,500 meals on the morning buffet, 6 restaurants and aqua aerobic. Everything is at hand there and you can just lie down at the swimming pool with a book, an icy cocktail, colourful drinks or refreshing sangria. There’s waffles for breakfast along with pancakes, 5 types of bread, 6 types of ham and 15 types of cheese. The room always awaits me in perfect and clean condition, the towels are fluffy and the bed is made. These are hotel’s advantages, but a rented house has even more of them. Especially if your company includes a little one. And the little one tends to get problematic when you only have a hotel room…
Łukasz in “our” home in Nerja during a month-long Eurotrip in August 2011.
LET’S GO: 9 REASONS TO RENT A HOUSE INSTEAD OF BOOKING A HOTEL ROOM!
1) MORE FREEDOM!
Renting a house most of all means freedom. You know what the saying says : an Englishman’s house is his castle!
More space for you and your child. Less doubts, less stress. We don’t get stressed when the child cries a little bit at night (or if, roughly speaking, the kid bawls out) and other tourists knock on your walls. You don’t have to hurry with your breakfast because the 2-year old runs around tables and annoys other guests. You don’t need to squeeze into a small room, where the little one has nowhere to play and after adding a children’s bed it’s hard to even move around. In a house there’s usually a living room, a bedroom, another room and a terrace/garden. Often there’s also a private pool and other attractions.
When you go swimming in the pool, you don’t have to take a bag full of stuff with you, so you won’t forget diapers/snacks/water/sunscreen. You just get into your room without the need of a 10-floor lift travel and a few kilometres walk in the long hotel corridors. That’s how it usually looks in popular resorts. We also don’t care much about the little one shouting, crying or peeing his panties. We’re at home, right?
2) CONVENIENCE
We like to rent little homes for holidays because it’s really convenient. First time we tried it when Maks was 3-months old and we settled in Nerja on Costa del Sol after 2 weeks of driving around Europe. We looked for a house in south Portugal then, but didn’t find anything. We found the one in Nerja in the last minute – we booked it Sunday Morning while packing in the hotel in Seville and in the afternoon we already lied on the sun chairs on our terrace.
It was then, when we realised that renting a house is a bullseye! It was comfy, because we didn’t have to carry stuff to the pool. It was comfy because whenever Maks was hungry I could just feed him in the room / in the shade on the terrace without the need to run to my room or cover myself with a diaper or something.
It was comfy because little Maks could sit in his cradle in a pleasant shade while we fried our heads off in the sun which we still like a lot! It was comfy because when we ate on the terrace, Maks was in his cradle, happy and never impatient. Now the situation is a bit different – different age, different needs. But we still like the comfort. Changing clothes, peeing, eating. No need to hurry, stick to the schedule and walks through the hotel corridors.
Maks beaching in his sun chair-cradle, Nerja 2011
3) EVERYTHING AT HAND
We’re not specialists in the field “I always have everything for my kid with me and I’m ready for any situation” as we tend to minimise the amount of stuff we take with us. We take what’s necessary – drinks, snacks, earlier also a hygienic pack (diapers, lotion and wipes), today sometimes a spare pair of trousers (just in case!), something warm, a nice toy. We don’t like to be camels and carry a whole house with us. We try to avoid unnecessary gadgets such as containers to measure the amount of milk, thermoses, 3 types of bottles for different drinks and 30 toys.
Even though, you need to take “something” for the swimming pool. For you and for the little one. Let’s face it: it’s better to go back for a book/scarf/lotion home than to a distant hotel room 🙂
4) LONG EVENINGS ON THE TERRACE
It’s one of my favourite advantages of renting a house instead of booking a hotel room. When we’re alone, we can only sleep in the hotel room. We can stay at the beach until 2 am, sip wine by the pool or go out and party until 5 am.
It’s a bit more complicated when you’re with a child. We still go out late with Maks, drink wine, eat dinner while he sleeps calmly in his pram. But many parents prefer their child to sleep in his/her bed. They prefer, or the child prefers it that way and does not accept any other option.
What then? 2 weeks in the hotel room with a book from 9 pm or even 7 pm? You can’t even speak louder because the child is sound-sensible. I won’t mention other night-time pleasures. Of course, you can do it. You can even sit in your room with a book from 5 pm. We however, still like to take some advantage of our lives and do something else than the TV, book and slippers combination…
That’s yet another advantage of renting a house. Because you can’t leave your child alone and go for a coffee or drink 10 floors down. Living in a house, you can talk, drink, play cards or eat delicious dinners on a terrace or in the living room, you can swim in the pool at night or seat in the jacuzzi and do whatever else you like!
our Mexican “terrace”, Akumal, Yucatan 2012
5) EVENING IN A COMPANY AND SOME GET-TOGETHER
If we travel with a company the “terrace evenings” advantage gets even more important due to the possibility of get-togethers. Because you can’t spend time together if you’re in separate rooms, sometimes on different levels or in different parts of the corridor while there are children in every room.
I usually don’t feel too comfortable leaving the child with an e-nanny. Probably that’s why we don’t even carry such nanny even though we bought it soon after Maks was born. I leave Maks sleeping on his own only if we’re really close and in an intimate place. Then I use the “nanny” – in a form of a smartphone app 🙂 That’s very convenient, try it!
If we have a house, the evenings with friends are ideal. The kids are asleep. The house is large and you don’t have to whisper. There’s wine, night-time swimming, jacuzzi, cards, night-time conversations, board games and whatever else you like. I know it as I’ve tried it lately! 🙂
Get-together opportunities are therefore far superior to those possible during a stay in a hotel room when every evening just passes in your room. You can sit with your friends, but then you fear if everything is alright with your kid. If he’s not crying, not scared of anything and generally safe…
6) NO DISSATISFIED, WRY TOURISTS
I’ll be straight with you: I hate people with wry faces. And if they are on holidays at the same time, I hate them even more. In the hotel, you may encounter the dissatisfied ones wearing wry faces. Because the kid’s running around, because the kid’s laughing loudly, because the kid cried, screamed, spilled something on the book or took something from another kid. Because the kid IS there and the kids are precisely what I wanted to have a rest from.
There’s always something. There’s always somebody that has a problem with something. Or a group of compatriots or non-compatriots who came here to visit the alcoholic all-inclusive bar and guess what – now YOU’RE the one wearing a wry face! A parent who wants to spent some calm time with their kid, relax, have some fun, and not listen to some drunk’s shouting. And that happens in hotels unfortunately. Especially if the all inclusive option is available.
So, in order not to see wry faces and not make ones yourself being mad and disgusted, remember: it’s better to rent a house!
7) OWN KITCHEN
House has one crucial disadvantage for me: the lack of breakfast. I’m not talking about other meals as we prefer to eat out. But breakfast at the hotel is quite convenient. I like to get up and know that there’s something delicious waiting for me and I don’t have to do anything and can just relax. Not in a rented house unfortunately.
But I have something else, that’s more important: the kitchen. Important while travelling with a child. Because you can always heat the water for milk, cook something for the little one if the local cuisine is not his cup of tea. You can prepare breakfast (yeah, we do it on our own! :)) and eat it on the terrace, and in the evening, prepare some snacks to go with the wine instead of sitting in the hotel room again..
picked from the nearby “garden”
8) MORE INTIMACY
House also means more intimacy. Sunbathing topless, eating in a swimsuit, having breakfast in pyjamas. It’s the holiday laziness that you can’t always have in a hotel. While staying at the hotel, you need to take a shower at a certain time in the morning, dress up and take care of your little one before the breakfast. At home it’s us who decide what’s appropriate 🙂
9) NO MORE SUN CHAIR RAT RACE! 🙂
You know the beach towel races? 🙂 Best sun chairs taken at 8 am? Or even better: ALL sun chairs taken at 8 am! Smartasses leaving their towels on for the night and others putting theirs at 6 am… That’s the hotel reality: rat race even on holidays!
sun chairs just for us 🙂
HOW ABOUT DISADVANTAGES?
I see 2 main disadvantages of rented houses:
– no cool breakfast that I love
– the room is not cleaned every day, which is a great advantage for a working mother and a nice change after everyday life.
But there’s much more advantages!
SOME PRACTICAL INFORMATION….
Many of you probably think: yeah, a house, but it must be more expensive… yeah, a house, but where to look for it???
We suggest checking these sites if you’re looking for a holiday house:
http://www.holidaylettings.co.uk/
We found our “last minute” fantastic houses there. There were no bummers. All houses are worth recommending, tidy and compliant with the description. The owners usually left some welcome snacks and ALWAYS left contact information to the person minding the house.
We rented houses in Spain, in Mexico and in Gozo – we recommend all the locations! In Mexico there’s no problem with the lack of cleaning as our house was cleaned every day.
And the prices? Our last experiences (August 2013) are as follows: a week in a 2-floor house in Gozo (Malta), with a big living room, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a swimming pool, terrace and jacuzzi for 950 Euro. House that could easily be a holiday home for two families with children. There were 6 of us – 4+2. If you tried, you could probably comfortably fit another couple there. So you get around 300-500 Euro for a family for a week which is PLN 2,000. There’s no food included of course, but even if you have alimentation included in your hotel price, you always eat out a lot anyway – some ice cream here, some sangria there and so it goes. Add a cheap flight to your rented house and you’ll get a nice idea for holidays. At a similar price with much more advantages. Calculate it, think about the pros and cons and next time try some home freedom on vacation 🙂
We recommend it!!
you can even pick the “lunch” from your garden 😉
0 Comments