Know Your Travel Websites - Airbnb

We all know the major travel websites: Expedia, Priceline, Orbitz, Travelocity, etc... These sites are fantastic and I use them often, but there are so many other travel websites to explore.

If you familiarize yourself with one other travel website right now, it should be Airbnb.com

 

What is Airbnb? 

It is a website that links people with a space to rent and people who want to rent it. You can rent a private room, a shared room, or an entire house/apartment. You might be in someone's home (or treehouse) or a standard bed and breakfast.

How do you use Airbnb? 

Airbnb is very simple to use. To search for accommodations just type in the location, travel dates, and number of guests - then hit 'Search.'

This will take you to the results page where you begin to narrow down your search.

On the upper right quadrant of the page you can specify if you want an 'Entire Place,' 'Private Room,' or 'Shared Room.' Use the pink slide bar below that to change your minimum and maximum prices.

The left side of the screen is an interactive map with the location of the available properties. You can change the results based on where you move the map.

On the lower right quadrant of the page you will see your search results. 

Clicking on any of the search results will take you to a more detailed view of that property, including a photo gallery, prices, property description, amenities, house rules, and reviews.

Since you might be staying in someone's home, you'll also see a photo of your hosts and their average response rate.

 

So what else can you do on Airbnb?

 

You can list your place for others to rent out.

You can check out neighborhood guides for an ever growing list of cities.

And if you click on 'Popular' under the 'Browse' tab, you'll see various lists of interesting places available on Airbnb.

For example, ever wanted to sleep in a train car? Or an air stream? How about spending a weekend glamping? Glamping is a stupid word for really cool and unusual pseudo-camping.  

 

Isn't this dangerous?

You're potentially staying at a stranger's house, so of course there is always a chance of danger. However, it seems pretty unlikely. There is a very clear online connection between you and the person you are renting from, so they would have to be incredibly stupid to commit a crime against you. Also, you can see others' reviews of the property and host. I feel very comfortable using Airbnb for my upcoming trip to Peru with 4 friends, but I'm not sure I would use it if I was traveling alone.

The British Virgin Islands

At some point my boyfriend gave his email address to Living Social. He typically trashed the daily offers without paying much attention, but one dreary spring day he opened an email to see a vacation deal to the British Virgin Islands. Sure, it was only good during the off season (summer into fall), but hey, island paradise.

We looked up some flights and booked it all right then and there. Our very first impulse purchase vacation!

The special was for White Bay Villas on the island of Jost Van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands. Jost Van Dyke is a tiny little island that is only accessible by boat, so we flew in and out of St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands.

Due to the timing of the flights and the ferries, we decided to spend a night on St. Thomas before heading to Jost Van Dyke. That night was spent with our new friends the Pain Killer and the Pain in the Ass.

The next morning we took a ferry from Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands to West End, Tortola, British Virgin Islands (see red route below). Since the US Virgin Islands are a part of the United States, this was the first time we had to pull out our passports. After going through customs and immigration and getting our pre-ordered grocery delivery (no grocery stores on Jost), we got on another ferry and headed out to Jost Van Dyke (see black route below).

We finally arrived on Jost Van Dyke and made our way to the villas. This was the view from our villa:

And that photo was taken with a crappy cell phone camera. I cannot adequately express how little justice this photo is doing to that view.

And do you see that beach? And how it looks empty? That's because it was. The busiest that beach ever got was when we had to share it with one other couple.

White Bay is home to two beaches, each with a bar. The beach closest to us was home of Ivan's Stress Free Bar, which is apparently an honor bar. You pour yourself a drink, write it down in a ledger, and make sure you pay up by the end of the week. I think that's super cool, and I was very sad they were closed for the slow season.

The far beach is home to the famous Soggy Dollar. It's called the Soggy Dollar because you'll notice a lack of docks in White Bay - if you pull up here in a boat you have to swim in.

The black rocky area between the beaches is appropriately named Black Rock. There is a walking path over it, but you'll need shoes.

The snorkeling in White Bay isn't anything to go out of your way for, but there were plenty of fish, coral, and underwater selfie opportunities.

If you have a jeep rental, you can drive to the opposite side of the island and then take a quick hike to the bubbly pool, which is a natural tidal pool behind a rock formation that breaks up incoming waves. Depending on the mood of the ocean you might see a boringly calm pool or dangerously high waves and currents. Or like Goldilocks, you might hit a lucky day when the waves are rolling in just right. 

Tip: The fruit growing along the path is poisonous, so bring bug spray. That seems like a non sequitur, but I swear it isn't. There were tiny bugs that eat the poisonous fruit and then bite you, and holy hell did that hurt! We kept jumping back into the water to get the bugs off and when we were finally ready to leave we had to run to escape the swarm.

Untraveled?

My blog title might be a bit of a misnomer. I have actually traveled quite a bit, but when I compare myself to the average travel blogger I feel like I've barely stepped outside of my front door. I conceived the idea for this blog during a mini life crisis of feeling torn between my wonderful and rather settled life and wanting to dramatically throw away (or gently pack up and donate) all of my worldly possessions in order to leave no corner of this fantastic world untraveled.

Like your average person, I will not be taking up travel as a full time occupation anytime soon. However I will continue to do my best to see as much of the world as I can while maintaining my career and beginning a family.

Here is a handy dandy map to show where I've traveled:

I used mapbox.com

The red pins are places I've lived and the blue pins are places I've traveled. I've driven through many other states in the US, but I don't think it counts if all I've seen of a state are their highways and truck stops. 

As is probably the case for many people, my travel has been pretty heavily centered near places I've lived. Thankfully I've lived near some pretty cool places, but I'm working on branching out. Next stop: Peru.