Photos of Vacation Rentals
December 28th, 2008 | Posted by Pauline
Plough Cottage near Painswick, May 2000
If you are curious to see the types of vacation rentals available in Italy, Switzerland and England, have a look at the places we have stayed in over the past ten years.
These are the places we have stayed since I got my first digital camera – from 1999 to the present. They give you a good idea of the types and quality of vacation rentals available in these countries.
Send me your links
If you have some great Europe travel photos or know of websites or Flickr accounts with great photos, send me the link and I will add it to the resources on my main photo page. Contact Pauline.
Third time lucky!
First I set up PhotoPost to display my photos on Slow Europe because I was used to it from SlowTrav. But I don’t like how it works and it was overkill for what I needed, so I looked for a better solution.
I found Gallery2 which is great software with easy to change templates. I uploaded my photos again. But it never clicked for me and was once again overkill for what I needed.
My final decision is SlideShowPro which fits into Adobe Lightroom. I use Lightroom to catalog all my photos and this lets me enter titles and descriptions in one place. I upload from Lightroom to SlideShowPro director which sits on the server. Then I link to it from my Slow Europe pages. It is a bit fiddly but in the end means I do all my photo work in Lightroom, which I really like. And you can view the photos one by one or in a slideshow.
So, photos have been redone - Slow Europe Photos.
The funny thing about all this is that I don’t have great photos. I use a Canon Elph because it is small and fits in my pocket. I take quick and practical photos. I just want to give people a feel for some of the towns we visit, walks that we do and vacation rentals that we stay in. I used to write all those “Instructions for Visitors” pages on SlowTrav and cannot get out of the habit of photographing traffic signs, parking meters and shops.
I only have a few photo essays uploaded, but will add more over the next few months.
December 29th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
Very nice! I just watched the slide show for your England rentals, and I want to stay in the Bath apartment and the Somerset cottage. :)
December 29th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Did you see my Cotswolder post about apartments in Bath? I found some great looking ones right on The Circus and the Royal Crescent: I live on the Circus in Bath!.
December 29th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Oh, thanks for pointing me over to Cotswolder! Great post on staying in Bath.
January 1st, 2009 at 5:35 pm
Two people sent me links to their great Europe photos!!
Azahar who lives in Seville posts photos of Spain and Portugal.
Patrick’s photos of his trip to Rome, December 2008.
I also linked to Janet Zinn’s travel photos.
January 12th, 2009 at 4:22 am
But which of those wonderful European rentals has been your stand-out favorite??
January 12th, 2009 at 4:35 am
You asked…
Here is a link to my picasa site with photos of the Piceno area.
I also have the http://www.nm2italia.blogspot.com of just photos.
http://picasaweb.google.com/BryanAscoli/PicenoSights?feat=directlink
I also like the blog http://romephotoblog.blogspot.com/
Ciao
January 12th, 2009 at 11:31 am
Of all the vacation rentals we have stayed in, we have never returned to one for a second stay.
We stayed in Plough Cottage at Well Farm near Painswick in spring 2000 and booked it again for two weeks in summer 2007, but that was the year of the floods in the Cotswolds and the water was turned off in that area, so we could not stay. I would happily stay there every year, but they are a Rural Retreats property and are highly priced – about double the price you can find with a smaller agency or renting from the owner.
I have thought about renting the tower in Cetona again, because it was beautiful and I love Cetona (Tuscany), but we rented that with another couple. It is a 3bed/3bath house and too expensive for just us to stay in.
One of our favorite places was the place in Somerset from Helpful Holidays. A great place and well priced, but as much as we enjoyed our week there, I am not drawn to that corner of Somerset like I am to the Cotswolds.
I think just as relevant as returning to the same place, is renting from the same agency.
We have booked many places in England through Rural Retreats. While they are expensive (even over-priced IMO), the places are beautiful. Perfect historic cottages, perfectly furnished in great locations. But after my experience in 2007 negotiating with them about cancelling our stay because of the flooding, I will probably not rent from that agency again. Helpful Holidays is a great agency if you are staying in Cornwall, Devon, Somerset or Dorset. And we have been talking to the owner of the cottage in Nailsworth where we spent two months last year about staying there again.
In Italy we booked with TuscanHouse several times.
In Switzerland we booked twice with the same family who owns apartments in Grindelwald. And I would happily stay again in the place we rented from the owner in Leysin.
Many times we pick a place because it has internet access or just a phone landline. We always do longer vacations (1 – 2 months) and have to be able to work for part of each day.
So, several favorites really, but none that we have returned to so far. I would like to find a perfect place, but am always tempted to try new locations, different places.
January 12th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
Thanks Bryan! I added your two collections and the RomePhotoBlog to my main photos page – http://www.sloweurope.com/photos/ – and to my page of Favorites here – http://www.sloweurope.com/blog/travel-blogs-websites-photos/ .
March 6th, 2009 at 12:26 am
Very nice! I just watched the slide show for your UK rentals, and I want to stay in the Bath apartment and the Somerset cottage.