I get asked many times how I afford to travel that often. One reason is that I don’t spend so much money when I am at home and the second is that when traveling, I try to save on either food, entertainment or accommodation.
While in South of France, I teamed up with Guest to Guest and I stayed at a lovely place called La Sourgentine at les Adrets de l’Esterel.
GuestToGuest is a home exchange website. The idea is that instead of staying in an hotel or an Airbnb, you exchange your apartment. Someone comes to your place and you go in exchange, to that someone’s or another one’s place. The good thing is that the concept works based on points which means that if you happen to be away in June for example you can have someone come to your place at this moment and collect points. With those points, you can decide to go later on on vacation and use those points to stay at someone else’s place. There is no obligation to do an exchange simultaneously.
How it works, is easy, once you decide where to go, you go on the website and look for an available accommodation. There is a calendar available so that you can see who can host you at your prefered dates. You then contact the host via the messenger inside the website and talk the last details. For the host safety, you prepay a deposit that will be given back to you once the stay is completed without problems.
Guest to guest is therefore a safe (unlike couchsurfing for example) and very easy way to save money while traveling. Indeed, the only thing you pay is a small GuestToGuest fee in exchange of the service.
Tip : There is a Facebook page where you can find last minute accommodations. I found my exchange that way.
As I said I stayed at La Sourgentine in Adret de l’Esterel, close to Mandelieu la Napoule, a house belonging to Jean-Pierre and Bernadette. They did everything to make our stay absolutely perfect. At our arrival they prepared some gift for us, homemade marmelade as well as homemade orange liquor. They lent us their barbecue as well as their snorkeling equipment and they even invited us for the so french Apéritif! Bernadette is a painter and all the decoration in our apartment was made by her, inspired by the culture and the landscapes of South of France. I can really recommend to stay at their place when traveling in the area of Cannes!
You can exchange their apartment on GuestToGuest or directly rent it via their own website.
Bisous
Amandine
