Staying Home While Traveling

A condo vacation rental from Lowery's Vacation Rentals, www.moremouse.com

It is twice now that I have sublet apartments in Miami while traveling there for medical visits and procedures. The two condos I rented for 2 weeks (in January) and a month this past September were totally different but both served their purpose.

The first purpose was, of course, to save money. Hotels are for a day, weekend, week. Past that point they are expensive and I would be paying for things that would have begun to annoy me. The restaurant in the lobby of most of the hotels in my price range can be wonderful on a dark and rainy night when I am too tired to leave the hotel but are usually on the Howard Johnsons gourmet scale. Exception: The Biscaya at the Ritz-Carlton in Coconut Grove -- one of my favorite restaurants in the world. Good to delicious, simple foods available (grilled salmon with perfect asparagus, perfectly colorful salad and the world's best fruit sorbet), gentle classical music to sooth the savage beast waiting for dinner, and perfect service.

My last apartment gave me a relatively comfortable refuge following a difficult surgery where I had stored food-stuff and drinks, had a separate bedroom in which to curse surgeons and a nice kitchen to keep myself fed at minimal cost.

The same factors would be relevant for the vacationing family group. Why pay for multiple rooms or suffer the indignities of sharing with children when a condo or house fully fitted out is waiting to give you refuge at less cost than the confines of a hotel room or rooms. Spread out, relax, make yourself at home, then vacation.

Visitors to Florida, especially those family groups with children tend to head for Orlando and the world of the mouse. For them there would be an Orlando rental home.