General Chat

David's thread about our favourite parts of our countries -- interesting reading ... makes me want to visit ...

I can hear us in the new world clamouring for houses in the mother country now. ;)

I'm in Ontario, east of Toronto. Easy access to the beautiful shores of Lake Ontario and cruises on the St Lawrence, and to the national capital, Ottawa, with its culchah (National Gallery, theatre, orchestra) and ... uh, well, there's a casino over the river ... And close enough to Montreal for a day trip or overnight. A bit longer to go to Toronto or Niagara Falls, but doable as a weekend.

So who wants my house for a week or two? It's big! Sleeps 6 or 8 easy.

Where is your house that I'd get in return? What would I do while I'm there? Can I smoke?

And ............ how clean would you require mine to be?

;)

Seriously though -- has anyone ever done a house swap for a vacation, and if so how did it go?

**prepares brochure**

Is that a taker? ;)


edit -- hold on, memory fails -- you're not on this same side of the Atlantic, are you??

I;d only do a house swap if they would do all the cleaning. and housework in return.....then it would be worthwhile x

Haha JC, ,maybe in a general vibe Vancouver Island way!! Based in UK!

I have just come back from Ireland.On the ferry back we got talking to a young Irish couple with 3 young children.They were on a house swap with a family in Cornwall.Said it was hard work getting the house ready but they did not have a lot of money so it was worth it.
Annie

~~~~~~ Hello? ~~~~ !

How about a house (sleeps 6...or 8 with a bed settee) in the SE, close to London, but in the Garden of England, sort of semi rural? Close proximity (as in about 3 miles) from major motorway routes, 40 mins by train to London, and v easy access to a Eurostar intermediate station to take you to France/Belgium for the day. Ideally located for various historical properties (if you can stomach being a 'Mrs' you can borrow our National Trust cards) Rochester, Canterbury and the Kent Coast.

Yes you can smoke, and we might even put you on a car insurance if you can handle a 'manual'!!!

We've toyed with the idea of a house swap, particularly during next year's Olympics, but are concerned at how clean we would have to make our own, and where to store items we wouldn't want people poking around in, i.e financial papers.

Muffy -- how about if we just swap and nobody has to clean anything? ;)


JRP ... yeah, you must just sound Canuck. Not sure what made me think that!


Fine, RMS, keep your mountains and Stanley Park and such to yourselves. We know your BC houses are far too valuable an investment to even consider letting central Canadian riffraff have custody of anyhow! :D


Grannyof 12 -- interesting. That what I've thought -- any kind of paying accommodation anywhere is just hugely expensive. If your house is sitting empty anyway, why not make the deal?

But yes, it would be a load of work. And as DET says, what about all the stuff you just don't want even your best friends mucking about in? Shove it all in one room and lock the door ... I know in my house it just wouldn't be feasible ... but I do have that still vacant flat next door ... That one would sleep 4-6, lovely garden, parking ... with a deceased 1994 Mazda van sitting there at the moment, but room for more.


I'm liking DET's proposal ... How are you on cats now?

If you were doing it for the Olympics, though, you could probably get a palatial residence somewhere much more exciting than here though, I fear. ;)

YOU WOULDNT WANT MINE IN A MILION YEARS
ONLY THING GOING FOR IT IS IN THE SMALL BEDROOM
(3 BED END TEREACE) IS ALL TRAIN SET UP
BIG BOYS TOYS

Lol - when the Olympics were first 'won', I did suggest we rented it and took ourselves off on a superdooper foreign holiday with the proceeds. :D

There you are, RMS, I just assume everybody in BC is in Van. You know, how you go abroad and say you're from Toronto, say, and people say "I have a cousin in Calgary, John Smith, do you know him?" You go west of Sudbury, and you're just out there someplace. ;)

But yeah, if you let the Albertan riffraff in, you really will take just anybody ...

No cougars here, but urban raccoons aplenty. And I'm sure they'd take your money given half a chance. We actually don't have many these days, having lost the huge tree in the next yard over, but in their heyday they burgled our house for cat food nightly. Eventually we replaced the patio screen door they had shredded to make their own private entrance.


Dizzi, you know, I'm not actually fussy! A caravan somewhere that wasn't here would do me just fine!


You know, if I lived where Olympics were, I'd certainly either swap or rent. After using the down payment received for a week of housecleaning services. ;)

What about Sydney Orstraylia - lots to see and do :D

Sue

My friend has a large house very near the Olympic stadium Janey, shall I ask her? lol she is clean but not over fussy, smokes, likes cats, and has some posters you might appreciate...womens emancipation and the like ;-)

Australia has actually been my dream since I was a teenager ... wasn't it everybody's ... Well, not Australians', I suppose ...

But the thing is, for Australia, you would't want to park yourself somewhere. You'd want to be out there exploring that famous outback!

I guess people would say the same about Canada, too. Unrealistic, sometimes, in both cases. I remember my dad's cousins's grandkids in Northamptonshire coming here and having this plan they were going to crisscross the continent a couple of times in a couple of weeks. And one, while he was here, was talking about doing Australia in a week or some such afterward. I tried to explain that the place was about as broad as the US, and look how he'd done on that one.

Got a caravan? ;)

Good of you, RR, volunteering your friends!

Don't get me wrong here -- it's not the Olympics I'm looking for! And I don't think what I have on offer would be seen as fair trade for that. A dumpy house in a dumpy neighbourhood in a lovely location, but hardly exotic. I'd have to throw in a trip to Banff to make up the diff, I'm afraid. ;)

CARAVAN NOW THAT I CAN DO

AND IF YOU DONT LIKE THE VIEW

JUST CHANGE IT

XXX

She is a very good friend :-) 30 years and only 'several' cross words! I maybe make it sound better than it is ;-) did I mention you have to be deaf not to be bothered by the dual carriageway approx 20feet away? I know her daughter would jump at the chance, she likes Canada !

I would offer my own very humble abode, if you can give me a year to tidy it up? either that or take it with a teenage boy in situ ? It is in a lovely county, if not a great location, but very good train links to all areas :-)

I can only offer an early Victorian hovel, listed of course, owned by an eccentric artist ? Standing room only for one.

2 rooms and the hallway are the gallery , floor to ceiling artworks , materials etc, 1 small den for eating ,sleeping , a galley kitchen, not for swinging cats in, and an even smaller ablutions area. Lets call it primitive and rural !!

The village has the obligatory church , pond, 5 hairdressers ,6 estate agents and a Spar grocery for basics at twice the price.

For a quick jaunt on the mobility scooter you can get some local colour by visiting the local museum to look at more of my paintings .

This is of course in a housework free zone LOL

Now, anybody who wants to call dibs on anybody else's house here, feel free!

I don't want to hog all the venues on offer ... and besides, I never get holidays anyway, and I am incapable of planning ahead even if I managed it ...

If we made a deal and called it a year's notice, make it for next spring, say, that might work.

Oh wait, when are those Olympics things?

... Hmm, late July. Well, May should be fine. May was when I visited England in 1994, and that was pretty warm.

Now for the southern hemisphere destinations, I guess we should make it in about February. I get sun and surf, and you get ... snowshovelling!

You're right Janey - you would need to spend a couple of years here and you still wouldn't see it all. We've seen a lot of Australia but when you look at the map it's only a very small part of what there is to be seen. We had visitors over from the UK for 7 weeks and they were disappointed by how little they actually got to see which was funny they actually got to see quite a bit.

Sue