Last August, my family and I spent 15 days in Paris.

Not in a hotel. Not in an Airbnb designed around what someone thinks tourists want Paris to look like.

We stayed in someone’s actual home.

It was a classic Parisian apartment in the 9th arrondissement, not far from Galeries Lafayette. High ceilings, tall windows, walls of books and two little balconies overlooking the city.

And we didn’t pay for the accommodation.

That last part still sounds slightly ridiculous when I say it.

The Paris Apartment

As someone who spends most of her working life looking at homes, staying in a real Paris apartment was probably my favorite part of the trip.

We stayed in this apartment in Paris, a real family home filled with books, plants, art and all the little things that made it feel lived in.

It felt lived in.

And I loved that.

Hotels are wonderful for a few nights. But when you’re staying somewhere for two weeks with your family, having a kitchen, a living room and a place to make coffee in your pajamas starts to feel pretty luxurious.

Then there were the balconies.

Sitting outside in the morning with coffee, looking down at a Paris street, was one of those very ordinary moments that somehow became one of my strongest memories of the trip.

So How Did We Stay There for Free?

We used HomeExchange.

I had known about home swapping for years, but I always imagined the traditional version: I stay in your house while you stay in mine.

That isn’t necessarily how it works.

HomeExchange also has a system called GuestPoints. You earn points by hosting people in your home and can then use those points to stay in another member’s home.

So the person whose apartment you’re staying in doesn’t have to come to your house.

This made much more sense to me.

I had already hosted through HomeExchange, so we had GuestPoints to use for our Paris trip.

And that’s how we ended up spending 15 days in an apartment in central Paris without a hotel bill.

The Part I Was Nervous About

Of course I was nervous.

You are staying in a stranger’s home. And if you host, strangers are staying in yours.

The whole thing requires a little more trust than booking room 101 at a hotel.

But once we started communicating with our host, François, that feeling disappeared pretty quickly.

We arrived late at night, and he was there waiting for us.

With a bottle of French wine.

Which, frankly, is a very good way to make me feel welcome in Paris.

He showed us around, explained everything we needed to know and gave us his recommendations for the neighborhood.

Within a day or two, the apartment simply felt like our Paris home.

Living in Paris Is Different From Visiting Paris

This was the unexpected part.

Fifteen days changes the way you experience a city.

You don’t feel the same pressure to see everything immediately.

We could have breakfast at home. Go out for a few hours. Come back. Sit on the balcony. Decide at 7 p.m. that we wanted to go somewhere.

There was no housekeeping arriving in the morning. No hotel breakfast deadline. No squeezing four people’s things into one room.

We had a home to return to.

And because it was someone’s real home, we also got a tiny glimpse into how people actually live in Paris.

For me, that was far more interesting than another beautifully styled hotel room.

Is HomeExchange Really Free?

The accommodation itself works through exchanges or GuestPoints rather than a nightly rental price.

You do need a HomeExchange membership, and you need enough GuestPoints if you’re doing a non-reciprocal exchange.

The easiest way to earn GuestPoints is by hosting other members in your own home.

There are also reciprocal exchanges, where two members agree to stay in each other’s homes.

I actually like the GuestPoints system because it gives you much more flexibility. I can host someone at my home and use those points for an entirely different trip later.

Would I Do It Again?

Yes.

And I don’t say that because every home exchange will be perfect. You’re staying in real homes, with real people’s belongings and their own particular way of doing things.

That’s partly the point.

For longer trips especially, I now find the idea much more appealing than spending two weeks in a hotel.

It also opens up destinations that can become painfully expensive once you start multiplying a hotel rate by 10 or 15 nights.

Paris certainly falls into that category.

But the money wasn’t actually what I remembered most.

I remember François waiting for us with the wine.

I remember the books.

I remember making coffee in a real Parisian kitchen and taking it out onto the balcony.

And I remember that, for 15 days, Paris felt a tiny bit less like somewhere we were visiting and a little more like somewhere we lived.

I’d happily do that again.