This material was written by our reader Sofia Goncharova.
If you do not want to buy standard offers from tour operators, like to plan your time yourself, and also want to save on housing (to spend this money on entertainment ;), then apartments are your option.
Apartments are one of the options for staying in a hotel, but in this case you get not a standard room, but a real apartment. Apartments can be located either in the hotel itself or separately, in ordinary residential buildings, and this option has many advantages over a standard room.
For families traveling with young children, it is most convenient to settle in apartments. If the child is picky about food, then here you can cook what he likes.
Secondly, a standard hotel room is for two. Sometimes they put an extra bed for a child. But families with 2 or 3 children will already be uncomfortable. The apartments solve this problem.
A great option for a group of friends. You can rent a 2-3-room apartment, which will be much cheaper per person than a hotel room.
You do not need to get up by 9 am after night walks to catch breakfast, or hurry from the excursion to lunch.
You can cook breakfast yourself. This is both a significant saving, and a pleasant opportunity not to go out in the morning if the night turned out to be stormy and lazy to put yourself in order. This is especially true for European countries, where the "all inclusive" option is rare, and you almost always have to eat in a cafe. In the refrigerator, you can cool wine and store fruits bought at the local market. In the end, if the rest is delayed and you get bored at home, you can cook your favorite borscht and rest further.
In the hotel you are surrounded by the same tourists as you. Actually, such accommodation is no different from living in a hotel in any country in the world. If you want to feel the atmosphere of the city, get to know it better, become a part of it, then it is best to settle in apartments in residential buildings. You may even be able to get to know your neighbors and find out from them about the cafes, bars and other interesting places that are not in the guidebook.
If you have rented a bicycle for a few days (which I highly recommend, because it is more convenient and interesting to move around the city in this way), you can leave it right in the apartment. The problem of storing a bicycle does not always arise, but in some cases it can be very convenient.
You will not meet other tourists in the corridor, including compatriots, and you can finally forget about the nightly entertainment program at the hotel.
The easiest way to book an apartment is, of course, on the website booking.com or airbnb.com (Life Hacker experience). It is there that you can easily find an option with a suitable price and convenient location.
Usually everything you need in the apartment is present: hairdryer, iron, kettle, microwave, refrigerator, TV and even wifi.
By the way, do not worry about cleanliness. During registration, the cleaning schedule will be discussed with you. In this case, the apartment does not differ from a regular room.
