Montage: 18 Vacation Rentals (Instead of Hotels)

We rarely travel as a family. On one hand, we miss out exploring new places and exposing the kids to different countries and cultures. (They can be heard whining that they’re the only ones in their classes that haven’t been out of the country.) On the other hand, we are lucky to have a beautiful place on Cape Cod where we can spend a good portion of summer and a little place in Florida where we can escape in wintertime. And I’ve been on some pretty amazing press trips in the last few years, with trips to Venice, Copenhagen, Helsinki, and Kennebunkport.

At one point we were talking about taking the kids to London. It would be easy for our first big excursion. Wherever we go, whenever we go (at this point plans are non-existent), I think it would make so much more sense to rent an apartment than stay in a hotel. Hotels are luxuriously wonderful for romantic getaways, but when traveling as a family, it would be so much easier, not to mention more economical, to stay in an apartment (or, you know, a villa) with a kitchen and roomier living space.

There are so many sites that showcase vacation rentals, be they short-term apartment rentals in urban centers or fabulous villas in the countryside, all with galleries of photographs of customer reviews. I browsed through a number of them, and came up with these 18 vacation rentals, in cities all over the world, from Santa Fe to Santorini to Sydney and Copenhagen to Costa Rica to Capetown.

These vacation rentals not necessarily the absolute best, most decadent or distinctive, as that would have taken a ludicrous amount of time, but they are all really appealing, from the photographer’s loft in Miami to the casita in Santa Fe to the mid-century modern apartment in Reykjavik. I’d be happy to take up residence in any of these apartments for a week, family in tow.