A few weeks ago I wrote about LoveHomeSwap, a webstie/service I signed up in order to swap homes with people around the world when traveling instead of going to hotels.

Well, this past weekend I completed my first swap and everything went amazingly well. It wasn’t a regular swap were someone came to my home and I went to theirs, instead a couple from Iceland came to my home while I was in London and for that I earned points that I can now spend in staying at someone else’s home while they are away like I was.

The couple in their mid-fifties from Iceland who stayed in my apartment were wonderful guests. When I showed them in the day they arrived they took their shoes off before entering the apartment without me telling them to do so (I didn’t do so myself) and they asked if it was ok to invite a family friend over for dinner next day. I told them it was definitely ok and offered them a good bottle of white wine to share with their friend.

When I came back from London they were already gone and I found the apartment just as I left it, everything was organized just like I left it, everything was clean, and they even left some flowers, a DVD about the northern lights which they told me were something I should definitely see if I ever visit their country and a thank you note.

What else could one ask for?

Now I’m looking to complete the second part of the experience and spend my points staying at someone else’s home next time I travel, I’ll let you know how that works out! ;)

A few months ago I came up with the idea of taking half a year off to travel with my girlfriend. I have recently sold my company and she is about to finish school, so it seemed like the perfect time to plan something like this.

We started discussing possible destinations, length of our stay in each location, etc. We then started calculating travel expenses, flights, hotels, diets, etc. and yep, it quickly become a very expensive project!

Looking for alternatives to bring our project’s cost down I was introduced to home swapping. I had heard about home swapping before, but for some reason had never consider it.

I did some research on-line and quickly signed up to LoveHomeSwap.

It’s been roughly a month since I signed up and published my apartment and so far I’m loving the concept of home swapping and the LHS platform. I must say I haven’t completed any swaps yet, but there is a very active community on the site and I’ve received over 20 swap requests so far.

A cool thing about LHS (maybe other platforms offer it too. I don’t know) is their swap points program. Let’s face it, it’s actually kind of hard to find someone who lives were you want to go who wants to visit were you live, you both want to travel on the same dates and you both like each other’s houses… What LHS offers (on top of regular swaps) is the possibility to offer you house for someone to stay while you won’t be there for whatever reason (maybe a business trip) and earn points which you can then use to stay at someone else’s place under the same circumstances. This doesn’t only take away the “dates” variable but also the “location”, since I don’t necessarily have to travel to the places were people who stay at my apartment come from.

I have recently agreed to a few swaps under this points program hoping to gain a good amount of points that we can then spend during our trip. First swap will come in early May, so, if anything goes wrong, or better than expected, you’ll hear about it soon!