Weary of the continental breakfast of four tablespoons of orange juice, a tiny pot of coffee, a huge pitcher of steaming milk and the daily basket of one delicious croissant, one inflexible hard roll and a packet of something akin to zwieback? Reluctant to pour the steaming milk into the coffee and then need to skim off those little flakes of cooked milk?
This may be the time to think of renting a villa for the next foreign vacation. A villa would have a coffee machine, and the town market would sell liters of orange juice and have a bakery next door. Americans could customize their continental breakfasts in a villa; packing and unpacking could be done just once, and part of the holiday wouldn’t be spent in an airport. Instead, there could be a garden where it might not be mandatory to order a Campari and soda from a patrolling waiter. It could even be possible to find a villa with a stall shower. (The spray hose attached to hotel bath tubs was designed to clean the tub and never meant for a vertical human body). Even more alluring, there wouldn’t be a bewildering array of taxes on the hotel bill.
Of course, there are some trade-offs. Everything, from cottage to castle, looks perfect in the catalogues for vacation rentals. Anything detrimental is easily photoshopped. Skies are blue, roads are empty and the house cleaners just left. Renters will need to bring their own bathrobes. The chosen property might greet guests in the residential equivalent of its pajamas. The geranium season has ended, there are leaves floating in the swimming pool and it’s raining. Tomorrow will be a better day.
The rest of the world doesn’t always share American ideas about screened windows as essential. Properties “nestled in valleys” may be dark and viewless. “High on a hilltop” can become “semi-accessible by four-wheel drive” and “rustic” is villa-speak for “lacking of familiar amenities”. Beds in the USA can be king or queen-sized, but elsewhere in the world, beds can be merely double. “Security” doesn’t necessarily mean an alarm system, but often includes shutters, storm windows, front, side and back gates, a watchdog, and a conscientious caretaker who checks up on locks in order to assure the owner the villa was sealed to the maximum.
When a person considers becoming a householder even for 2 weeks, that person needs a pocket dictionary of the country’s language. Phrase books don’t tell the renter how to describe a blocked drain to a local plumber. They’re good for questions about medical problems, introductions, and auto accidents, but they don’t work for the answers which may come from native speakers or from refugees from nations other than the one the visitor is in. The refugees are learning the language of the country that has given them shelter. Unfortunately, that country is not currently the USA.
Another way to spruce up language skills is to rent foreign movies without English subtitles, though one should be wary of crime stories and amorous romances. They can make a visitor sound as if he or she has an unsavory history. Although it’s now possible to type translations from English to the language of almost anywhere on a mobile phone, those translations don’t contain more than the word ordered. If your question requires an explanation, this could take more than a moment. An hour.
Think positively. Temporary residents can rent a car and wouldn’t need taxis for everywhere they want to go. Taxi drivers all over the world enjoy guessing the nationality of their passengers, an American problem since January 21st, 2017. It’s morally wrong to lie and pretend to be Canadian.
Besides, renting a car is a terrific way to nudge your memory on how to shift smoothly from reverse to drive with gears that aren’t buttons. Even Americans often wonder why they have to carry a key fob if the car doesn’t require a key to start.
During the current American administration, seriously consider a holiday in the Southern Hemisphere, which has not yet been as vulnerable as Europe to white supremacy propaganda delivered by Twitter, especially on weekends. Long holiday weekends; even extended vacations. A hacienda somewhere else sounds ideal.