Inexpensive Apartments

by **OntarioTraveller** » March 27th, 2009

I am 60, retired and looking forward to travelling.

I am searching for a website that I can locate an inexpensive apartment for a month or two in Rome or Florence, at a cost of about $1,000 CAD. Is it possible? Can my wife and I keep our monthly expenses down to the $2,000 level.

by **Ramboo** » March 28th, 2009

unlikely
try venere.com

by **OntarioTraveller** » March 28th, 2009

I checked it out and there are lots of possibilities.

In Apr '08, I rented a two bedroom apt with livingroom, diningroom, kitchen and 2 bathrooms, 1 1/2 blocks from St Peter's (Rome) for 6 days. Cost 110 euros/day. http://sleepinitaly.com

Now I want to stay longer, but don't want to break the bank. Maybe that is the point. You can't stay at the great sites for a long time.

by **John_M_C** » April 1st, 2009

OntarioTraveller wrote:I am searching for a website that I can locate an inexpensive apartment for a month or two in Rome or Florence, at a cost of about $1,000 CAD. Is it possible? Can my wife and I keep our monthly expenses down to the $2,000 level.

Let's talk in terms if Euros (€). €1,000/month~€30/night. Apart from a hostel, you will be lucky to find anything under €60/night in the tourist season and that might even be too low an estimate.

You can get closer to this estimate in Krakow or Bratislava, for example, but it is very hit-or miss. Start by searching in Google under the city name + apartments.

Good luck.

by **OntarioTraveller** » April 5th, 2009

Thanks for the advice. My own brother sent me an email and mentioned http://VRBO.com (vacation rentals by owners) which I have spent the last day searching through. Great site.

But still . . . no long term deals!

by **teacherwoman** » April 5th, 2009

Have you tried Craigslist? You can search the vacation rentals or the short term rentals by visiting the Craigslist of the city or area in which you'd like to stay. Many times the entries will link you to other sites with more info. I've never actually rented a place this way, but spend a lot of time looking. Anyone out there actually booked something through Craigslist?

by **Bua** » April 13th, 2009

I booked a short-term vacation rental a while back through Craigslist. It wasn't in Europe, but it ended up being a pretty good value for the money. Only downside is there tends to be more work involved to find a good deal on there, but it's certainly worth checking out.

by **AndreaW** » April 24th, 2009

OntarioTraveller wrote:I am 60, retired and looking forward to travelling.

I am searching for a website that I can locate an inexpensive apartment for a month or two in Rome or Florence, at a cost of about $1,000 CAD. Is it possible? Can my wife and I keep our monthly expenses down to the $2,000 level.

First of all (I am Italian) my suggestion would be Florence. Rome is great but maybe you can have a better time there. Well, more or less I agree with John_M_C, it's not easy with this budget, but sometimes booking for more than few days you get an interesting discount. For stay up to some weeks I know WayToStay, they are in Florence here http://www.waytostay.com/Florence-apartments-en-229.html check out...or maybe you can also contact them and ask for more details for a some weeks stay (I see taht they have an US number for the customer care).
Think you can try.

by **jessus** » April 26th, 2009

I know this isn't quite what you're looking for, but it might work!

Depending where you are located (are you keeping a place of your own while you travel?) you could look into home exchanges - Just google it and you get a whole bunch of sites where people list their dwellings in the hopes of vacationing in someone else's home! - possibly another couple in the same position (or anyone else, really) could be interested.