Hello

My first blog ever and it's going to take a while to get up and running smoothly so hang in there. Don and I love to travel and we have been to a lot of wonderful places and finally decided to document it.

Travel, like so many other things, has become more and more expensive so about seven years ago we decided to join HomeExchange.com. That way we could stay in somone's home and even get the use of their car if available. No paying for hotels or rental cars and you get to really experience the culture and live, for a little while, like a native. We were a little discouraged with our results at first. I sent out about twenty invites to home exchange members around the world and I either got no response at all or just a flat "no". One home owner in Spain even said, "I would not consider Minneapolis as a vacation destination". Well. Really? I know that Minnesota is not New York or California but there is still a lot to do and see here.

But then, we got our first offer of an exchange, someone actually contacted us! It was for a week in Sonoma Valley, CA and we jumped on it. We also agreed to swap cars. After that we were offered an exchange in Berliln, Germany for two weeks! Berlin! It wasn't even on our radar as a place to visit and we loved every minute there. Since then we have always received at least two or three offers for an exchange every year and two years ago we went on four exchanges in one year: Santa Fe, NM, Iceland (Iceland!), Washington, D.C, and Oahu, Hawaii. The thing is, all of our exchanges (and we are going on our eleventh exchange soon) have been from people contacting us. We've not got one exchange when we've asked someone. We don't even bother any more. This year has been crazy, we've received seventeen offers to exchange homes since the first of this year. We are already booked for two exchanges in 2015, Prague and New York City. I don't know why everyone wants to come to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul all of a sudden but I'm happy to accomodate as many as possible. So, where are we going next? South Africa! Stay tuned.