Reconciling Fantasy with Reality

You have seen the movies, Enchanted April, A Room With a View, and read the books, Under the Tuscan Sun, and A Year in Provence, and now with visions such as these dancing in your head, you are about to head off for that storybook vacation in Tuscany or Provence. Will the dream match the reality? The thought lurks in the back of your mind and will not go away.

The answer to this question is that the two, fantasy and reality, can be very, very close, but only if your fantasy is not so unrealistic as to be impossible to realize.

We are frequently asked questions, from somewhat nervous first-time renters and I’ve attempted to answer some of the most common below:

Will the house be clean?

Virtually everyone we speak to expresses this concern. I often wonder why this is such a concern. Is this question asked when you rent a house on the Maine coast, or on Sanibel Island in Florida? I think that this is a holdover from the post-war neorealistic movies of Italy, depicting a rather bleak existence, and not a very antiseptic one at that. However, the Europe of today is nothing like that of 60 years ago. (Yes, it is actually 60 years since the end of the last World War.) This is not the Third World, but a thriving modern society, which in many ways is at least as advanced as ours.

The short answer to this question is: “Of course, the house will be clean; that is the reason that you must vacate the house on Saturday morning at 10:00 and the next renter can not take occupancy until 4:00 that afternoon.” Owners need at least this amount of time to properly prepare a house. However, the people who rented before you may have been absolute slobs; if they left the house in a shambles, then expect that the maid will be hard-pressed to have it sparkling. Will you be upset if you discover a spider web in a remote corner of a bathroom? It will happen, on occasion. If this type of thing will drive you up a wall, perhaps you should stay at a hotel. This is the country after all; fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, and spiders gotta weave.

Will the sheets and towels be changed on a daily basis?

Again, this is not a hotel and, in fact, things are changing rapidly in hotels. You will see notes in hotel bathrooms asking you not to ask for towels to be changed unless they are truly dirty. It costs a small fortune to do a load of laundry in Europe and travelers from Holland, or Sweden, or Germany do not expect linen change much more than once weekly. As we have said many times, this is not the same as a hotel stay and if you need such things as a daily linen change----do you really change your sheets and towels at home each day?-----then you probably should stay at a hotel.

What should we expect to find at the house in terms of staples?

You should expect a certain amount of basics; soap, paper towels, bathroom tissue, coffee filters, dishwashing detergent, salt and pepper , olive oil, bottled water. We ask owners to provide this but it is not always there. With our larger properties, we can often make a request for supplies to be purchased in advance of your arrival. We can have not only the basics, but some luxuries as well. In general, however, there will be the basics but owners are not perfect. One of the advantages of arriving not too late in the afternoon, is that shops are generally open until about 8:00, sometimes even a bit later. Get to the house; do a quick inventory of what you will need immediately-----probably until Monday morning as it is still difficult to find shops that are open on Sunday-----and go to the market and buy these things.

What about communicating with my family, my office? Should I bring my laptop computers?

Some of you may remember traveling to Europe back in the dark ages, when telephone service was a joke, with pay phones swallowing up gettone as if they were M&Ms, and still no dial tone. Western Europe is now at least as advanced in their communications network as we are in the United States; payphones take phone cards, available for purchase just about everywhere, and those payphones are virtually foolproof. However, we recommend that you bring a cell phone. There is a caveat to this recommendation; many cell phones used in this country will not work in Europe. Check with your provider, whether it is Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile or any of the others to be certain that your phone is compatible with the GSM system in Europe. If not, the easiest thing to do is to rent a phone, either before you leave for Europe or when you arrive. The charges are quite reasonable, both for the rental and phone charges. If you travel to Europe (or in Asia, Africa, South America) relatively often, you probably own a phone that operates in all of these places.

Computers: Unless you are absolutely attached at the hip to your laptop, there is no reason to bring it. Internet cafes abound, even in small towns where you would not expect to find one. If you must have your own computer with you at all times, it is important that you be prepared to have dial-up rather than high-speed service from your rental property. Our philosophy on the ubiquitous computer in our culture? This is a vacation; keep that uppermost in your thoughts. Do you really need to have daily e-mail communication with your office, your children in college, etc? Bringing your laptop with you adds pounds and bulk to your luggage; gives you one additional thing to lose or break or worry about. Leave it home; our guess is that you will, when you return, thank us for this advice.

I've heard some frightening things about drivers in Europe; can I manage without a rental car?

Have you ever driven in Boston? Now that is truly frightening; in general, drivers in Italy and France are better drivers than the ones you have encountered on the Interstates in this country. For one thing, they really know the rules of the road and they will never, and I mean never, pass on the right, which is one of the most dangerous driving transgressions one can do, yet it is routinely seen in this country. Do the Europeans tend to drive fast and seem to have water running through their veins? They do, and if they think you are driving too slowly they will drive within what may seem like inches from your rear bumper. They don't want to frighten you, however, they are simply narrowing the space that will be required to pass you when the opportunity arises. Pretend you are one of them; drive as they do and you will be fine. The fact is, that unless you have rented a place in a large city, you really do need to have a car. Public transportation in much of Europe is quite wonderful and you can zip from Rome to Florence in under 2 hours by train, whereas the drive, even at autostrada speeds, takes about 3 hours. But you will, in most instances, be in the countryside and just as in the countryside here in America, you will need a car. Ask us about cars; we have many years of experience both driving in Europe and assisting our clients with rentals. We try to take the complexity (VAT, airport surcharge taxes, insurance coverage, and the like) out of the process.