The House-swap

Last April, while attending the wedding of my friends Mark and Keiko, in Tokyo, Jack and I met Mani and Jono, a young couple from London, who were friends of the groom, and there for the wedding.

Mani & Jono at Karoake April 2010

We swapped stories of travel, and of home. I told Mani about my dream of exchanging houses with folks living in other parts of the world. Before long, we had agreed to a swap in a year.

Our house in Costa Rica

On April 8th, we set off for London and they  left to come here, to Costa Rica’s Central Valley.

We arrived at Heathrow with Mani’s instructions in hand, and effortlessly found their flat in Belsize Park.

They’d  left us their Oyster cards, smart cards for accessing public transportation; several guides to the city, including the famous one, London Street Atlas A to Z; and pages of notes on what to do and where to go.

Everything we needed was within walking distance, the tube station included.

Inside the tube station at Swiss Cottage

“Belsize Park. How posh,” said Michael, my closest friend in London.

“This is a neighborhood for celebrity spotting. You could see Gwyneth Paltrow,” said Daisy,  a friend of my daughter’s and mine from Tokyo.

Houses in Belsize Park

We didn’t see Gwyneth, but we enjoyed the house and the neighborhood. If we’d have had to pay for 10 days in London, we probably wouldn’t have made the trip.

On our last day in London, we met up in Soho with Mani, Jono, Michael, and his friends, Niklas and Joakim, from Stockholm.

Mani, Jono, Jack and I declared the house-swap successful. We must have been convincing, because, before the afternoon was over, we’d arranged another swap. Here we come Stockholm!