Well, I';m back from my European vacation. We had a wonderful time touring Hungary and the Czech Republic, and I';m proud to say I didn't work at all for three weeks while we were away. That's right — I didn't check my email for inquiries, didn't take any calls from renters and didn't even talk to my housekeepers. I let my friends (who I owe big-time) handle every aspect of my vacation rental business while I was away, and the break was really nice.

The vacation rentals that we stayed in on our trip were even better than we imagined. The apartments were impeccably clean, well-maintained, and – with one exception – pretty much ideal. The one glitch came with our rental in Budapest. The building's central air conditioning was broken the day we arrived, which just happened to be one of Budapest's hottest on record. (And of course, air conditioning was my number one must-have when I was searching for vacation rentals in the first place!)

I have to give the owners credit for responding to the problem as best they could. The owners purchased a portable unit — the type that function primarily by pushing the hot air out the window, not the normal window box units we';re accustomed to in the U.S. When we arrived around noon, exhausted from our overnight flights, the owner apologized and said that the air should be fixed by 4 p.m. We went out for a long, leisurely lunch, and when we came back around 5:30 p.m…still no air.

We debated for a while about what to do, but once the temperature inside the apartment reached 39 C (about 102 F) we called the owner and told him we';d have to move to a hotel. We weren't upset…just tired and hot. The owner called us a few days later to let us know that the air had gotten fixed, but by that time we were settled in at the hotel and didn't want to take the time to pack and unpack our belongings once again. The owners graciously refunded our rental money, and that was that.

It was fun to experience vacation rentals in Europe from the traveler';s point of view. Maybe I'll have to look into buying there, too!

Christine