This is the Untold Italy travel podcast and you're listening to episode number 171.

Ciao at all and benvenuti to Untold Italy, the travel podcast where you go to the towns and

villages, mountains and lakes, hills and coastlines of Bella Italia.

Each week your host, Katie Clark, takes you on a journey in search of magical landscapes, history, culture, wine, gelato, and of course, a whole lot of pasta.

If you're dreaming of Italy and planning future adventures

there, you've come to the right place.

Jiao, benvenuti, friends. how's your Italy trip planning going?

I hope you're having fun because often the planning is almost as enjoyable as the actual trip.

And what's really exciting these days is that there are so many ways to travel and enjoy

visiting countries that we never imagined, certainly when I started travelling in the 1990s. Back then, most bookings

were made by phone or snail mail, or you just turned up at the train station and haggled for an apartment.

Shout out to all of you who backpacked Europe like that way back when. Today we're going to look at a

relatively new way to travel and that's via a home exchange.

Listener Tim Van Patten reached out to me keen to share the fun his family had swapping homes for a week or two

with some Italian families and the wonderful trips and experiences they enjoyed as a result.

In his own words, Tim is a regular American guy he loves to travel with his family.

They have the usual two-week vacation and school timing constraints and a desire to see the world without breaking the bank.

So let's hear from him now about how they organise the home exchanges and the adventures that followed.

Benvenito, Tim, chow and welcome to the Untold Italy podcast.

Hi, Katie.

It's so unbelievable to get to talk to you.

So I'm really glad to get to speak to you about Italy.

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