We lived in Beacon Hill, a neighborhood in Seattle that is on the light rail line and less than 15 minutes to downtown Seattle. Beacon Hill is just a few restaurants, shops, a park, and a grocery store that happens to be next to metro station. This is the perfect location for us for our own city, but it is also where we want to be when traveling. Not downtown in the hustle and bustle, but just a few minutes a way even if you don’t have a car. Cheaper than in the prime location but still in a neighborhood with some character and things to do. When searching for Airbnb’s and hotels for our trips in other cities, we are always looking for their Beacon Hill. I want to know the Beacon Hill’s of all the cities we visit, but sometimes it isn’t easy to find them.
After retirement, we are transitioning to wanting to spend a month or 2 in a town instead of our former stays of 2-3 days or a week. Several weeks in a bad hood can be….. BAD. So how do you find the best neighborhoods in places you have never visited? Well you can visit them… and we have found some Beacon Hill type neighborhoods in our former travels and we continue to find them in our current travels. But there are ways to study a town and get and idea of where you want to stay before ever traveling there.
In 2021, we wanted to go to Puerto Vallarta to “work from home” for a month, but knew we didn’t want to stay in the city or in the fancy hotel zone. Looking at Airbnb maps, I saw several great places just in a nearby town called Bucerias which were much cheaper and were interesting because it was a much smaller town. I looked on Google Maps and realized that this town had a lot of restaurants and was still on the the same calm bay as Puerto Vallarta. We could take local buses and still visit PV, or other nearby towns like Sayulita, La Cruz or San Pancho. I checked Trip Advisor and found a lot of great conversations from Canadian snowbirds that just loved Bucerias. I searched on YouTube and saw several travel vlogger videos to solidify that this place was going to be perfect for us. We booked a place at the edge of town on the beach that worked out great for us.
After visiting Bucerias, we learned a bit more about the town, and now know that the best neighborhood to stay is North of the river in town and on the beach side of Highway 200. We want to stay in the section closer to the grocery store and and be with the other snowbird expats. We went back in 2022 and stayed in this “Golden Zone” and we will be back again in 2023.
Sometimes, hotel and Airbnb prices really scare us away from a town. New York prices are not in our budget ballpark. So where is the Beacon Hill of New York? I just want a safe neighborhood with some restaurants and a metro terminal. We have friends of friends that say Queens or the Bronx are the place to go. If we end up in New York again, we are going to be talking to those people who can help us find something there that won’t break the bank.
We are currently planning going through France and Spain next fall. The search for housing is ongoing and I am working hard to find the right neighborhood for Bordeaux, Madrid and Barcelona among other places. This is taking some work even though we have been to Madrid and Barcelona before. I am searching Airbnb, Trip Advisor, Rick Steves Books, and Google Maps and watching a lot of semi helpful YouTube vids. One new tool in our toolbox is asking other travel Nomads on Facebook groups. We belong to groups of full time travelers and a request for help always gets answers from many people no matter what part of the world is asked about. But, sometimes these travelers don’t have the same budget that we do- either too low or too high for us. Some people don’t like that same things we do. Some need to be in the action, some need a garage for their rental car. Some people wouldn’t even like our Beacon Hill.
The best way for us to understand the neighborhoods of a new town is to talk with people that have been there and really understand the layout of the city. We are going to make an increased effort to meet and talk to more long term travelers on our next trips. We will go to meetups with other Nomads and fulltime travelers and make some contacts that will help us find a great stay. When we are on walking tours of other towns, we need to be a little more outgoing. We have things to share about where we have been, and it is always fun learning what they know. The meeting of new travel friends is at the top of my new years resolution list.