– this might seem a rather strange title for a blog about travelling! But the thing is that I want to feel at home no matter where I go – and that’s why I’m crazy about home exchange – exchanging my home for somebody else’s during the holidays.

My family and I have home exchanged more than 20 times over the last 12 years. And we love it! And we can’t help telling everyone we meet about how great it is. Which of course makes people ask a lot of questions: Is it really safe? How does it work? Where can you go? How much does it cost? etc. etc. So now I’ve decided to write a blog about our experiences and about how to do it, if you want to try it, too.

Ny name is Annemette Østergaard Henriksen, I’m 53, teach English to business people when I’m not travelling, and live in a small town in Denmark in a ordinary Danish house with my husband and my youngest child. My two oldest children have both left home, but all the kids and their boy/girlfriends still often go home exchanging  with us, because they love this kind of holiday just as much as we do.

However, the first trip I’ll be telling you about on this blog will not be a traditional home exchange holiday (and none of my kids will be joining us). For some years now my husband and I have been talking about going on a long road trip in the USA, and this summer we are going to make this dream come through. Home exchange is not really ideal for road trips, it’s better for holidays where you stay in one place and go for outings from and to that base. But we have exchanged homes with (or borrowed homes from) home exchangers in the US several times, so we know how hospitable and friendly the Americans are, and therefore we thought we’d see if we could meet some American exchangers during our trip.

We wrote to a number of home exchangers who live along our route (which you can read more about on this blog tomoroow) and asked them if they’d like to meet us and maybe let us use their spare bedroom for a couple of nights. We got a lot of positive replies – some from people who were unfortunately out of town or had family staying at the time, but five very nice couples thought it might be fun to meet two Danish roadtripper and invited us to stay with them. We can’t wait to meet them all.

So during the next month I’ll be posting pictures and stories about our adventures and the people we meet. I hope you’ll stop by Villa Henriksen once in a while and read my posts – also when we return home and I start writing about our previous home exchanges and how to do it yourself.

PS I’m a complete beginner at blogging, so I hope you’ll forgive me if I haven’t quite gotten the hang of all the technical stuff yet.