With dumpy Left Bank hotels going for $250 a night, the only way my family was getting to Paris this summer was if some French family agreed to clear out and let us sleep in their beds, eat off their plates and use their bathroom for free.
Fortunately, a nice couple in the 11th arrondissement - an advertising manager and a travel executive - said that was fine with them. Of course, while we're watching Les Guignols de L'Info on their TV, they'll be watching Denise Koch or Deal or No Deal on mine.
Thanks to a weak economy and a Cameron Diaz movie, swapping homes is the way to vacation this year. Internet home-exchange services report big increases in people trying to stretch travel dollars with free, reciprocal housing arrangements.
"The single most costly item of any trip is accommodations," says Helen Coyle Bergstein, who founded home-trade site Digs ville.com in the 1990s. "If you eliminate that line item, that allows you to travel more often. To travel farther. Or to have a richer experience. Eat out more often. Do a side trip."
Or afford a trip you wouldn't have even contemplated if it came with a hotel bill.
"With an uncertain economy and rising fuel prices and a dropping dollar value, people wanting to take vacation are going to look at any way they can to save money," says Justin Bergman, senior editor at Budget Travel magazine.
The first question every home exchanger gets is: Will you really trust complete strangers to live in your house and drive your car?
It takes a certain faith. But I have yet to hear about a home swap that involved anything more negative than unreplenished toilet paper or divergent housekeeping standards.
Exchangers usually spend weeks or months communicating before the event, which builds trust and a mutual sense of responsibility.
The Parisians and I have shared a phone call and dozens of e-mails. We're shopping garage sales for car seats for their two little kids. They offered to find us cheap airplane tickets using their travel-industry connections. We traded family pictures.
Paul Larner and Rosita McKee of Catonsville got so chummy with a Texan they met through Home Exchange.com that the man offered to let them use his vacation condo for free, without any swap.
The couple and their children have exchanged in Paris, Telluride, Colo., and Limerick, Ireland.
