The Year We Rented the Whole House
Ten years of booking rooms in the valley, and the trip that finally broke the habit.
What We Kept Getting Wrong
For years we did the valley the same way: two rooms in a small hotel, breakfast at whatever time the dining room decided, and everybody meeting in a corridor to work out the day.
It was fine and it was never quite right. With four adults and two children you spend the whole week negotiating, and the negotiating happens in reception because there is nowhere else to have it.
The Change
The year we took a whole house instead, the difference was immediate and slightly embarrassing, in that it should have been obvious a decade earlier. A kitchen. A table everyone fits round. A door that shuts.
It changed what we booked everywhere else too. When we went to Indonesia the following winter we did not look at hotels at all, and ended up in a four-bedroom villa in Bali for the same reasons and with the same relief. Same shape of trip, opposite side of the world.
What It Costs
Per head it is frequently cheaper than the rooms were, particularly once you are cooking two meals a day at home instead of eating out for all of them.
The catch is that it only works above a certain group size, and it requires one person to be willing to do the booking and the shopping. That person should be rotated annually and should be thanked properly.
