Is this an M.C. Escher drawing or a real place?  Oh, it is real. I visited the Mezquita or Grand Cathedral and former mosque of Cordoba a few years ago during a month-long visit to Spain.

Built in the year 600, this amazing forest of columns and marble  is often regarded as one of the most accomplished examples of Islamic architecture.

The Mezquita
Cordoba, Spain

play me:

Have a cool yule!

Are you traveling for the holidays?  Some find it a chaotic hassle, but I kind of like being in airports or train stations during the hustle and bustle – so many trying to get home to loved ones near and far. I have spent some of my favorite holidays abroad either completely alone or laughing and breaking bread with new friends and making memories that I cherish always (thinking of Sean, Craig, & Helen in Sydney, Elissa in London, Kristy in Sevilla, Adam from Philly in Krakow, Couchsurfers in Milano, Halley, Sonia, Vanessa, & my other Egypt friends).

My mantra has become traveling long term is cheaper than you think.  It’s also ‘life is better with cheese’, but that’s another story.  I’ve written about it here and here and here. But today I wanted to narrow in on one specific cost: lodging, aka: room & board, accommodations, or simply ‘where to lay your head.’

When traveling long term, it is, at times, odd to acknowledge the fact that you often don’t know where you will sleep each week.  Although, it has always worked out for me so far and I’ve never had to sleep on a park bench (but have slept in airports), there are many times I show up in a city with no reservations and have to lug my bag to a few places until I find a bed.  There was the time I arrived in Sydney just in time for Christmas.  I had reservations at a hostel for a week, but didn’t think ahead to New Year’s Eve, when this huge, international city would be chock-a-block with revelers from all over Australia and all over the world. Oops. Had to go an hour south just to find somewhere with space that wasn’t prohibitively expensive. Lesson learned and as I traveled, I learned a lot more about other options besides hotels and hostels.  Here are just a few:

Home Stays

Couchsurfing – I can’t say enough good things about Couchsurfing. It changed my travels and the way I look at traveling solo. Some of its many perks: You have friends everywhere & anywhere.  You can get local fast.  You can enjoy the warmth of a home and kitchen.  You frequently can have your own room.  You get to do and see things that you otherwise never would.  You feel a bit more ‘taken care of’ than usual…and it’s nice. As a host you can still meet new, interesting people when not traveling.  It’s FREE.

Other similar free choices:

• Tripping
• Hospitality Club

Airbnb – I became a host on Airbnb in Chicago before I used it as a traveler.  It has a very similar feel to couchsurfing, except it’s a bit ‘more corporate.’  Read: it costs travelers money (but still much less than a hotel room), but this way it also allows homeowners to make some money.  It runs the gamut – you can search for just a room or even rent a whole apartment or villa!  It lacks a tad of that community spirit that Couchsurfing has spent years cultivating amongst its members.  But there seem to be a lot of crossover (couchsuring-airbnb) users, so hopefully it will grow into a great community.  My first guest could not have been more interesting. He owns a large herb company that supplies some major supermarkets across the US. His brother? A former progressive mayor of Bogota that started the Ciclovia bike day there and built hundreds of kilometers of bike paths and greenways and rehabbed 1,200 parks. Thanks to him, bicycling in Bogota quadrupled to 400,000 people per day.  Here is a great interview he did with the NY Times.  His other brother founded 8-80Cities, an organization helping make our cities more bicycle and pedestrian-friendly around the world.   Oh, and their father was Colombia’s Ambassador to the United Nations.  So…you never know with whom you might host or stay.

Other home stay rental sites:

• Vacation Rentals By Owner
• Home Away
• Vacation Remix
• Home Exchange

Housesitting

I’ve done several house sitting and pet sitting gigs during my travels in places like Istanbul and the Hollywood Hills and Manhattan.  Most were through word of mouth, but there are quite a few sites (some free and some with membership fees) out there to help you find jobs:

• Trusted Housesitters
• Sittercity
• House Careers
• Mind My House

Rental Apartments

Perhaps you want your own space and you’d rather have it professionally managed rather than just by a homeowner.  There are dozens of rental apartment sites popping up in every city.  Often times this is cheaper than a hotel, plus you get your own apartment complete with kitchen, sometimes laundry, and if you’re lucky even more perks like a pool! I recently tried this out in London and Portugal. It was great to have key and my own place. Plus the apartments are often in ‘real’ neighborhoods, giving you even more of a feel of being local rather than staying amidst the rest of the tourists.  Some of the big ones:

• In Europe: Paris, Berlin, and Barcelona Apartments.
  
• Roomorama
• House Trip

Disclosure: In London I was a guest of Oh-London and in Portugal Roomorama hosted my stay. As usual, the views here are my own.

Typically big-box stores (a la: Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Target, etc.) and over-sized supermarkets have been an American import slowly spreading their bland conformity across Europe and beyond.  But this is a switch.

I first visited the mega-sized specialty market, Eataly, in Turino, Italy, in 2009.  I’d pegged it as an all-Italian ‘Whole Foods’.   My mouth watered and my eyes glazed over as I roved the many, stark-white aisles filled with sexy bottles of truffle-oil, silky gelato, and an amazing array of fresh meats, pastas, cheeses, and breads.

The Slow Food organization serves as a consultant to Eataly, and the artisinal super-store has adopted its three principles.  Slow Food is good, clean and fair food. 

• Food must taste good
• Food must be produced in a clean way that does not harm the environment, animal welfare or our health
• Food producers should receive fair compensation for their work

Like Santa bringing us gifts at Christmas, one red-faced, jolly Mario Batali, has now brought Eataly to all New Yorkers.   The huge store sits just across the street from the Flatiron Building and Madison Square Park and is a mecca of Italian foodstuffs, various fancy bar ‘stations’ (more like mid-store restaurants), and boisterous espresso and wine bars.

Upstairs, on the roof, Birreria opened this past summer.   The huge outdoor space is more than a beer garden, as sometimes described, even though they do brew some of their own ales as their name suggests (Birreria means brewery in Italian).   For me, the food is the draw here as the menu is stuffed full with all the delightful fixin’s of an ‘Italian picnic’ – charcuterie, cheeses, mushroom dishes, and other assorted savory morsels.   It’s not cheap, but the views are pretty priceless with the Empire State building looming overheard to the north and the Flatiron building just to the west, across the street, so close, you feel you can touch it.

See photo gallery here. Roll-over & click on each for larger image slideshow.