I want to do this now! My work has a sabbatical option (go on 4/5 pay, take a year off every five years). I'd love to take advantage when my husband is working (e.g. has income) again.

wow, a sabbatical option is so cool! lucky you

i mentioned this to DH, and he said "a year is too long" but otherwise he is game

now, to get rid of these pesky kids! only 6 more years for the youngest one to graduate high school

Me too!

Hey, there's always a semester at sea!

googling.... sixth grade ... semester at sea ...

Saw this and it seems their air b and b experience has been pretty good overall. I would be okay with it as long as the apartment owners / tenants were not there and i had a pied a terre on the continent. The peripatetic couple in the article have an invaluable asset / contact in their daughter in Paris who gives them a European base.

I traveled for several years and it is exciting and tiring. A month or two at a time would long enough for me to be gone now, and it would def push the envelope for DH. When he was a child his dad did a sabbatical at Groote Schuur Hospital in South Africa and took the fam. DH enjoyed it but not enough to want to do anything similar with our kids.

Yeah, gives me hope, esp since their budget was only 90/nt, iirc.

I would do air Bnb not so much to save money, though that's always nice, but to have a different kind of experience, and to be able to cook some meals and do our own laundry, have more space, outdoor areas, bikes, etc.

I think we would cheat and throw in a nice hotel once in a while! Lol

"I think we would cheat and throw in a nice hotel once in a while! Lol"

Yes, about once every four moves for me

I'm also in the 6-more-years-till-done-with-high-school group. We can all meet up in some exotic locale!

Oldest is a junior and I'm not enjoying reliving that time period.

Mtn, I sent you an email last week. Did you receive it?

I would love to do that. I can retire in 10 years, and my DS will graduate from HS the year before that. I'm hoping my parents will still be in good enough health to do some traveling with me at that time. I could never talk DH into going away for so long.

Wow! I could never. To me, it would be like an endless business trip. Towards the end of only a 2 week vacation, I'm ready to go home. I miss my house and my stuff and my own space.

If it's your style, though, it sounds like a fab way to see the world. If I wanted to tour the US, air bnb sounds like a far better way to go than one of the giant RV things.

But what do they do if they get sick? Can you imagine having the flu and having to vacate the apartment?

Chispa,Oh sorry, that's not my primary email ... I will go look and respond today!

Annie, we tend take three week international vacations because I'm always trying to amortize our flight costs! There are five of us and they think if the seat doesn't lie flat it is broken. After three weeks though, I usually could care less what I am looking at and just want to go home and sit on my sofa, have a bowl of cereal (with COLD milk) and play on gardenweb! So that would be a risk. I guess you might go thru that homesick phase and have to power through it.

I don't think it'd feel at all like business travel. No getting up early and having to be sharp! No staying out late and having to eat and drink, sometimes with people who were tiresome or boring. And best of all, someone to share the beauty of the sights and surroundings. Oh and no high heels unless you want to!

Mtn, why not take the kids? It's an education in itself! A few years ago I followed a blog of a family who did just that...painful to watch their tally of every time an airline lost the luggage though...

Annie, I'm with you. I am always so anxious to get home from vacation. I love my own space. The thought of sleeping on a different bed gives me the hebee gebees. When I had to travel for business I was always creeped out by being in a bed that wasn't mine. Many evenings I slept in a hotel chair with my feet propped on another one because the mattress felt like a slab of concrete.

I do think it sounds like a great way to see the world if you are a traveler and aren't OCD about the things I am.

I moved a lot as a kid and young adult so I have never yet experienced homesickness. When I'm on vacation I could stay forever and don't really tend to miss friends and family. But I do treasure a comfortable bed and that has become one of the pitfalls of travelling for me.

Reminds me of the old cartoon where the 2 ladies are chatting and one says, "Last year, I went around the world. This year, I'll go someplace else."

BP, I wouldn't want to homeschool them, and we can't leave in the summer... We have it make use of the Maine house for goodness sakes!

Not to mention, I see it as a kind of a romantic adventure, and certainly one that you'd want to undertake when you are a lot more portable than a family of five.

We are very seasoned travelers, have lived overseas and are airbnb hosts in our second home. I think I could do this for an extended period of time, but not years. Once you are gone for a month and you mentally cut the ties to going home and get "over the hump", you don't get as many pinings for home. However, having some "stuff" that you call your own is quite useful. You don't truly need as much "stuff" as we all have, but it's nice to have the same pillow and bed linens.

DH latest itch is to buy a property in Europe to use as a base --- and then use VRBO/airbnb to offset the operating/holding costs.