My experience with Airbnb

When you are travelling and don’t want to stay in a hotel or hostel, maybe you need more privacy or just want to live like locals, you can rent a flat or house from locals. There are different websites for this, but I have only used Airbnb and can recommend it. I started to rent out my flat about a year ago. As it is my home and it is complicated for me to move out often, I only rent sometimes for a weekends or school holidays. Depending on where you live and your conditions you can look around on that website to find similar ads to have a picture how much to charge. Anyway it is a good way to earn some additional income, no matter where you live, there are probably people looking for accomodation. If you like to give it a try, you can sign up for free and there is a little gift if you sign up with these links – if you are planning to host, you will recieve 46 euros, which can be used on your next travel   https://www.airbnb.com/r/merlia?s=8&i=

If you are going to travel and searching for accomodation, you can sign up here http://www.airbnb.com/c/merlia  and recieve 19 euros.

I wish you all happy travelling.

I have met so many people from different countries, different cultures and backgrounds, I am truly happy for this opportunity to experience different cultures without going anywhere. Most of my guests have been from our neighbouring countries – Latvia, Russia and Finland, but I had also guests from Portugal, Poland, UK, Germany, Austria and furthest was from India.

Here are some photos from my window.

Ireland 15.-18.10.2016

First time in many years I travelled without my kids. I flied from Tallin to Dublin for 3 days with my mum. We arrived before sunset and took a local bus to city centre, which was much cheaper than airport bus. We didnt had much luggage, so we walked around a bit before going to our hostel. We needed to buy something for dinner, it wasnt easy to find supermarket, everything closes so early. We stayed in MEC Hostel in 6bed female dormitory, it was nice old building. Other girls in our room were nice and quiet, but I couldnt sleep well, my bed was next to the door and all night people were walking nosily in corridor.

16.10

We had our breakfast, it was traditional Irish breakfast, toast with eggs, jam and cheese, cereal with milk. And went to bus station, as we wanted to go to Galway for a day. It’s cheaper to buy return ticket, than 2 single. It’s an open ticket, you can use any time within 1 month. Bus took us across the Ireland to the west coast. The weather was nice all day, but soon after we arrived it started to rain and didn’t stop till morning. We left our things in hostel and tried to walk around a little. We didnt see much, but it is a very nice small town. We stayed at Barnacles Hostel in the main shopping street. It was a nice modern hostel. This time it was a 12bed mixed dormitory with 2 bathrooms inside the room. It was half booked only, and room was at the end of corridor, so it was quiet to sleep and I could sleep well.

Dublin

On the road

Galway

17.10

We had our breakfast, which was pretty much same like yesterday. It wasnt raining anymore, so we walked around a little and then took bus back to Dublin. In Dublin we had to walk with our luggage, which got heavier as we bought gifts. We went to see all the famous places before it got dark. Then just walked around, did some shopping and late evening we took a same bus to airport. We spent some hours there sleeping, as we had early morning flight at 6am to Tallin.

Daytrip to Finland 25.7.2016

If you have Vikingline membership card, which you can make for free, you will get 2 tickets for a day cruise to Helsinki in your birthday month as a gift. So my mother had a birthday in July, she got 2 tickets, I had couple of vouchers and we could get 8 tickets + a car for 60euros. Ok, there were 4 children under 11, which are free anyway. So off we went, me, my 3 kids, my mom, my brother and his 2 young daughters. We started our trip at 4am to cach 8am ferry from Tallin. It takes 2,5 hours. Theres plenty to do 0n a cruise ship. Children can play in a play area, there are several restaurants to enjoy your meal or you can walk around or sit on deck and enjoy the view.

As we had so many children with us and a car, we had a plan to go to Moomin World in Naantali near Turku. We didn’t  think we will drive that long, so half of the time we spent in car. Weather was beautiful and children absolutely loved Moomin World, it was in a really nice park, but nothing so interesting I would want to go there again. Anyway, children happy we drove back to Helsinki, we still had some time, so we went to another theme park to Linnanmäki. Entrance there is for free and kids can enjoy around 10 free rides. We didnt had much time there, kids definetely liked it and if I will go to Helsinki with them again, I will go there again. And that was it, our day finished and we headed back to our ferry.