(In a March 21 blog post this year, travel guru Arthur Frommer expressed his dissatisfaction with the traditional approach to vacations. Instead of visiting an area where he ricocheted from one tourist attraction to another only to collapse from exhaustion in his hotel room every night, he wanted a more meaningful interaction with the people and the terrain he encountered during his international travel. Here's an excerpt from Mr. Frommer's blog. Read the entire post here. )
"Rather, I began to understand that the travel I enjoyed was associated with people and ideas, the travel that enabled you to experience other lifestyles and ideologies, new and different cultures, totally different ways of dealing with urban and social problems, provocative assumptions and opinions that contradict everything you normally believe. To look upon what was different from your own life, I concluded, was part of the adventure of life."
(Mr. Frommer goes on to suggest ways to find appropriate lodging to facilitate this philosophy.)
"Arrange to stay in homes or apartment[s] in residential neighborhoods, rather than in hotels, and thus enjoy the unique sensation of living like a local. Such very successful firms as HomeAway (http://www.homeaway.com/), VRBO.com (http://www.vrbo.com/), Rentalo.com (http://www.rentalo.com/), and Endless Vacation Rentals (http://www.wyndham-vacations.com/) will rent apartments or homes to you, and for even shorts stays of a week. Such companies as Airbnb (http://www.airbnb.com/) or Crashpadder (http://www.crashpadder.com/) will arrange for you to live in the spare room of an apartment or home whose owners remain in residence. Other programs like U.S. Servas (http://www.usservas.org/) and GlobalFreeloaders.com (http://www.globalfreeloaders.com/) will enable you to enjoy free hospitality in apartments and homes around the world. And home exchange programs such as HomeExchange.com (http://www.homeexchange.com/) or Intervac (http://www.intervac-homeexchange.com/) will enable you to live in someone's foreign apartment or home while their owners stay in your apartment or home during the time of your respective vacations. Nothing could be better suited to envelop you in the actual life pursued by other residents of this earth."
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