Travel the nontraditional way

“If you regret the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay at home.”
- Historical novelist James Michener
A few years ago, we found an easy way to dodge the mistake so many travelers make of isolating themselves from the curious dishes, strange habits, mysterious beliefs, and assorted lifestyles of people in other countries.
We joined a nontraditional travel club, staying in members’ homes instead of hotels. Over time, we figure we’ve saved a ton of money, made new friends, and added some zing to our travels.
As travel budgets shrink, particularly for those of us trying to make it on IRAs, pensions, and Social Security, nontraditional travel looks better and better.
Inns and B&Bs have been around forever, apartments can be rented by the week or month, and the Internet is full of opportunities to trade houses all over the world – all part of a growing nontraditional travel-stay world.
We found the Affordable Travel Club a bit different.
It’s a simple concept:
For $65 a year, members get a list of other members who have agreed to host them for a few nights and give them breakfast and local travel tips. In return, each member agrees to host occasionally when other ATC members come to town.
Hosts are usually paid $20 a night for a double ($30 for housing outside the United States) – although we have found the price can vary, especially during peak travel times in hot tourist spots. But it’s always a bargain.
ATC was started in 1992 by John and Suzanne Miller, who had done home exchanges but who wanted, in Suzanne Miller’s words, “to start something where there was no expectation of reciprocity – where you had to host them and then they hosted you. We wanted something where you paid your fee and stayed and you didn’t have to have the same people in an exchange.”
ATC now lists 2,400 homes in 49 states and 50 countries and caters to people over 40. Over the years, it has added home exchanges and house-sitting opportunities to the mix.
We learned about the group through a friend we met in Puerto Vallarta. She calls herself “an adventuress” and can usually be found globe-trotting, crewing on oceangoing yachts, or visiting friends she’s met through ATC.
Our ATC lodgings have included a two-bedroom apartment in Prague whose owner stocked the fridge with yogurt and orange juice for our breakfast; a comfy, flower-bedecked guest room in Cardiff whose owners introduced us to Welsh food at a local pub; a room near London whose landlady took us to her favorite tourist sites and cooked dishes from her native Bangladesh; and, in July, a city lodging in Rome whose owners were chock full of valuable advice on seeing the sites.
Along the way, the Prague couple told us stories of their bland, gray life under the thumb of the Soviets; the Welsh gentleman talked of his career with the country’s sports federation and regaled us with stories of local soccer greats; and our London hostess has become a friend we look forward to staying with whenever we’re in town.
All said they particularly liked getting to know Americans outside of the images on movies and TV.
Most of our ATC experiences have been foreign. And we haven’t had many members in our home because our place is small and guests have had to share our one bath, a deal-breaker for some travelers. But we’d love to have more guests in our house.
Our longtime friends Dot and Dick Salogga recently returned from a 38-day trip to Australia and New Zealand during which they stayed in 10 ATC homes for a total of 22 nights.
It wasn’t perfect. After all, these are people’s homes, not the Ritz.
One place the Saloggas stayed had a “quirky outside stairway,” Dot said. “You had to walk through the house to get to the bathroom. It was a little funky.”
And Dick ended up being a handyman for an older woman in Sydney who asked him to change a light fixture that had gone on the blink. “But we thoroughly enjoyed every one of our stays,” Dot said.
You might be asked to end an exhausting day of nonstop sightseeing with a cup of cocoa in the living room with hosts who want to know what you think of their hometown and about your life much further into the evening than you might like.
Or, particularly in Europe, you might have limited heat in the bedroom at night and not as much hot water as you’re used to for a morning shower.
Hosts have their complaints too: Guests don’t always ask before using the computer or washing machine, or they leave the bedroom littered with snack wrappers and soft-drink bottles.
But for the most part, traveling the nontraditional route is an enlightening and worthwhile experience – one our friends and we will do often. After all, the hosts and guests of ATC travel this way because they want to know more about one another and the wider world we live in.
As that other writer, Mark Twain, famously said: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.”
We like to think Twain would have loved to occasionally ditch the hotels and resorts on his foreign travels for a cup of cocoa and a long talk about current events in the living room of everyday hosts like us before drifting off to the guest room for the night.

This article is from http://tourism9.com/