For the past 18 months of our nomadic journey, we basically lived full-time in AirBnB apartments apart from visiting family. That means a total of 17 AirBnBs in 17 cities and 8 countries. That’s a lot of bookings, making ourselves at home and enjoying beautiful places. Since our stays aren’t just a quick weekend but our homes for at least a month, we want to make sure our apartments are not just good but amazing! We prioritize level of comfort, the location, an awesome kitchen, ideally a view and of course the budget we want to stay within.
We’ve gotten so good at finding temporary homes that we share our best tips to find the best and most affordable AirBnB homes in our ultimate Airbnb money-saving guide.
In this article, we will be going over our top 5 AirBnB homes along with many pictures and of course the cost. Accomodation is one of the big three expenses categories people have (along with food and transportation) but it can also be quite affordable to live in beautiful places. The same quality of apartments in San Francisco, where we were living before, would have been ridiculously expensive. Are you ready to see some of our amazing homes around the world?
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Our Top 5 AirBnB accommodations
Why AirBnB?
We decided to use AirBnB, mainly for the following reasons:
- Availability – AirBnB is available worldwide so no matter where we go, there is a high likelihood that we can find a place to stay through this platform
- Ease of booking – The booking experience is seamless and consistent across countries. As much as we love adapting to different cultures and languages, it’s nice for this major travel logistic to be predictable.
- Peace of mind – AirBnB provides peace of mind in case something terribly wrong happened. Let’s say our host never show up to let us stay or had to cancel last minute, AirBnB will be available to try to help us out if we ended up in the middle of a foreign country with no place to stay.
- Connect with locals – AirBnB offers opportunities to meet locals and connect directly with them upon check-in which is a terrific option to get local tips, learn about the local culture and have wonderful exchanges. We have to say though that this has become more and more difficult to find since a lot of people are using AirBnB as pure investment and tend to have little interaction with their guests.
- Long-term traveler friendly – Renting a home that someone has been using for their day-to-day life usually feels warm, extremely functional and delightful to stay. No surprise they represent our favorite kind of rentals!
Number 5 – San Miguel de Allende
Our favorite feature were the gorgeous sunsets. We rented a 1 bedroom / 1 bath loft in the downtown area. The place was part of an 8 building complex with other similar rentals. We had access to a roof top facing the center/churches and were walking distance from everything (restaurants, sights, grocery stores and markets).
San Miguel de Allende 
For having traveling a few months in Mexico, this place was extremely quiet. One of the highlights of our apartment was the view from our dining area had great views of the city along with incredible sunsets that we enjoyed with dinner. We also got free cleaning once a week which was a really nice treat to keep the place tidy.
Cost: we spent $34 per night for the two of us.
Airbnb listing: here.
For more details about this location, check out our San Miguel de Allende’s destination report.
Number 4 – Puerto Vallarta
Ocean views? Why not.
We stayed in a large 2 bedroom apartment with an amazing view. We woke up to the beautiful ocean and sat in the comforts of the apt and private balcony to enjoy it. We also had access to a nice rooftop to really appreciate the location. The kitchen was great and well stocked which was helpful as we enjoy cooking healthy and nutritious meals. The location was great, in a local neighborhood close to Centro, a grocery store, the Malecon and anything you would need.
Cost: we spent $23 per night for the two of us.
Airbnb listing: here.
For more details about this location, check out our Puerto Vallarta’s destination report.
Number 3 – Montréal
What a luxury to each have a private office. We stayed at an Airbnb apartment rental in the Vieux-Rosemont District of Montreal, which is a safe and quiet neighborhood. Our apartment was on the top floor of a triplex on 4th Avenue. It was a very comfortable & sunny 3 bedrooms with 2 of them converted as offices, which was perfect to have individual space for each of us to work. The apartment also had a good kitchen that we extensively used to cook. We also had a nice patio outside which was perfect to enjoy food on the warm summer days.
This was actually the first apartment of our nomadic life, where we took this picture that you might have seen on our about page. This was taken in front of the entrance that you can see on the right.
Cost: we spent $16 per night for the two of us.
Airbnb listing: here.
For more details about this location, check out our Montreal’s destination report.
Number 2 – Lisbon
We loved our apartment in Lisbon, it had so much Lisbon charm. It was an apartment that a family was subletting that is normally their permanent residence. Those types of apartments work out much better for us because they are much more functional, usually have a fully stocked kitchen and there is so much more charm and care put into the decor.
Our apartment was well decorated, extremely functional, very quiet and had a terrific terrace (see video) that made for some great dinners with spectacular views of the city, especially at sunset. The apartment was located in the historical center of Lisbon, in the Rossio area. It was on a charming street and our host provided us with helpful lists of groceries stores and local restaurants. We were also just a 10 minute walk from the Alfama neighborhood that is a must see in Lisbon.
Cost: we spent $61 per night for the two of us.
Airbnb listing: here.
For more details about this location, check out our Lisbon’s destination report.
Number 1 – Kotor
Views views views from not one but 3 balconies. The picture of the view on the listing definitely caught our attention and the rest of the apartment happened to be great too. This was our best AirBnB apartment yet and it was so good that we felt that we had to record a video to let you get a sense about what we got.
This two bedroom apartment was located in Dobrota (which is about a 30 minutes walk from the city of Kotor). It was up on the mountain which allowed for amazing panoramic views, well worth the uphill trek to get home everyday. We used the lovely terrace every day to either enjoy a sunset or our breakfast/lunch. The apartment was well furnished and the kitchen was well equipped. And did we mention there was a pool? It wasn’t heated but Mr. NN loves a cold swim, Mrs. NN not so much.
Cost: we spent $45 per night for the two of us.
Airbnb listing: here.
Cost Summary
Here is the cost summary of our favorite AirBnB:
| Location | Cost per night |
| 5 – San Miguel de Allende, Mexico | $34 |
| 4 – Puerto Vallarta, Mexico | $23 |
| 3 – Montreal, Quebec | $16 |
| 2 – Lisbon, Portugal | $61 |
| 1 – Kotor, Montenegro | $45 |
Our bottom line
AirBnB has been an awesome resource for us to travel the world differently and we are looking forward to more amazing homes in the years of nomadic travel that we have ahead of us.
If you never used Airbnb fill out the form below and take a look at what place (or experiences) you can find next to you or for your next vacation. You might be surprised how affordable travel can be!
BONUS: If you want to get started with Airbnb, you can use our sign-up link to get $55 USD (or the equivalent in your local currency) and we will also get some AirBnB credit at no additional cost to you once you book your first stay.
3 Comments
Skip · October 16, 2019 at 10:32 pm
Thanks for sharing these experiences. We have used Air BnB for several of our travels in the U.S. and will continue to do so when we start our international travels. You make a great point regarding the fact that Air BnB will help you find another place if things fall through. Never really thought of it that way. Nice little piece of insurance. Good to know about the great experiences.
Depending on the circumstances, we may also plan to rent one bedroom apartments directly through the source when we hit SE Asia. I’m looking forward to your SE Asia posts regarding housing.
I know there is a large community of people who do house sitting. When I looked into that, it seemed like it was really more about pet sitting. We like cats and dogs, but don’t have pets ourselves. It is an interesting option, but I’m not sure how home/pet owners in that community would feel about pet free people house sitting for them. Have you guys ever considered this?
Mr. Nomad Numbers · October 17, 2019 at 3:48 am
Thanks Skip! My wife met with some expat yesterday for lunch and found out that you can get WAY cheaper accommodation by directly renting once here than what is available on AirBnB. We know that we pay a little bit of a premium for using AirBnB compare to the work to get the local discount. That being said we usually don’t mind as AirBnB provide a nice peace of mind and make the research quite easy. Plus as you’ve seen by the money we spent we are still way under an hotel/resort/condo pricing.
If you want to optimize your spending to the next level, then visiting apartment once you get to your destination is definitely the way to go. Something we will consider if we decide to return to a specific city for more than 1 month at a time (since most of the best deal are usually for 3-12 months lease).
Another tip we’ve started doing is to connect to the expat Facebook group of the cities you are interested in. These community are really resourceful and we see two advantage of using them: 1) you don’t need to speak the local language (as English is the main language), 2) you tap into a community of ppl that have already done the research for you 🙂
Hope this helps!
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