As a passionate traveler who likes to spend prolonged periods exploring new cities, towns, and villages, Airbnb provided an easy, affordable, and accessible new way to travel when it launched in 2009. While I didn’t begin using the app until 2014—when I booked a tiny studio apartment for my best friend and I in the then up-and-coming area of Lisbon’s Bairro Alto—I’ve since gone on to stay in 67 Airbnb-listed homes in places like Hyderabad, Montréal, Bogotá and Sri Lanka’s cultural capital, Kandy.
I choose my lodgings based on the design of the listing and the previous reviews, staying for as little as a night or two, up to multiple months at a time (my longest stay to date was a three-month stint in a quaint cottage in England’s Peak District, complete with roaring log fire and dreamy kitchen).
