Because I am currently planning a trip to Europe in November of this year, I have been doing quite a bit of research on different types of lodging and for the majority of my trip, I have opted to choose an apartment as my first choice for lodging.

In my series on how to budget for your vacation, we’ve discussed different forms of lodging. We started out with hostels, worked our way to bed & breakfasts, talked about local vs. chain hotels, agriturismi and most recently, we discussed camping.

In this post, I’m going to discuss apartments.

I would have to say that in the past, the idea of staying in someone’s apartment while I traveled would probably have never entered my mind. Then sometime in the mid 90’s, some friends from Mexico wanted to come to San Antonio to visit and they asked me to see if I could locate a hotel room for them. This was not an easy task as their family numbered 7 with their nanny. In the past I had been able to find them an extended stay hotel but this time they wanted to come during the Easter holiday, or Holy Week as it’s referred to in Mexico, and because they had waited until the last minute to notify me, I couldn’t find room at the inn. At around the same time, a friend of mine informed me she would be leaving for vacation and would I mind taking care of her dog while she was gone. Voila, problem solved! I would stay at Susan’s place and my friends could stay in my one bedroom apartment.

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