Welcome to our blog!

Thanks for taking the time to come take a look at my blog- I really appreciate it. This adventure we have started is a completely new experience and well out of our comfort zones. We have no idea where it will take us or how long it will last but I hope you can find the time to occasionally see where we are and how we are doing. 

To be honest, when we first had this idea a blog was the last thing on my mind. I’m no writer and, if I am truly honest I was not 100% sure what a blog even was. However, once we had told a few friends and family our intentions, many asked us to do one. Suddenly it seemed like a good idea.  As a great way to keep you all informed of what we are up to and where we are at any given time, plus, on a more personal level, if our new adventure continues for any serious length of time, then it will act, for us,  as a memory box of moments in time and places we have visited along the way. 

 I have to start with an apology, my embarrassing lack of technical knowledge meant I had to wait for help from my nephew, Chrysafis, to help me get started, this means that I have started this blog later than I intended and hence, our adventure has already begun, The result of this is that  I am behind schedule with the background information I thought you may like to know that brought us to this point in time which in turn makes this a long post – In my haste to get up to date, I’m attempting to get the first 10 years into one post! 

So here goes!…

For those of you that do not know us, I am Colin, recently retired.  Karyo is my husband, originally from Greece, and is still working in an office-based job.  We met in 2003, lived together for a while in my home town of Stoke on Trent, UK then in 2007 decided to move to Manchester City Centre.

We immediately loved our new City Centre apartment.   It had a spare room that was never used and we knew there was a real shortage of hotel rooms in the City.  It seemed there were enough rooms to accommodate one big event but if two events clashed on the same day, a football match and a concert for example, then vacant rooms were like gold dust.  This gave us the idea to let our spare room on a short-term, nightly basis.  Our spare room had an en-suite bathroom and our apartment location was fantastic – The idea was born!

Now, we had to think of how to advertise our apartment to let. The only way we could think of doing this was by using a  Gumtree advert.  With trepidation, we placed the advert then waited…and waited.  It was not a total disaster but we had to admit that our vision of being inundated with bookings just never happened.  I think ‘a trickle’ rather than a rainstorm would be the best description.  Approximately one weekend every couple of months, we would welcome guests to stay and soon got used to sharing our home with others.

One day, in 2010, my phone started to ring. The caller display announced ‘unknown caller’.  I have no idea why I decided to answer the call but am so glad that I chose to do so! 

The guy that called explained that he was working for a new company,  ‘Airbnb’.  He explained the concept that was very similar to what we were doing already, allowing people to rent your spare room for short stays.  He told me that he had seen our advert on Gumtree and wanted to know if we would be interested in advertising on their platform?  I had never heard of the company but it was free to advertise and you only paid a commission if a booking came through their website so I agreed to let him cut and paste our advert onto the Airbnb platform.

I had no idea at the time how much this out-of- the- blue phone call would change our lives!

Two days later we received our first booking, A Chinese couple that wanted to visit Manchester to see Manchester United play a match.  China! – Until then our furthest guests had travelled from Leeds! 

From then on we never looked back,  For the next 10 years, our room was booked every weekend, and often during the week also. We met the most lovely people from all over the world and enjoyed the whole experience immensely.

Yes, it was hard work, we were both working full time as well as meeting and greeting guests and all the extra work that was involved with the cleaning and general admin but we had a goal to pay off our mortgage and become mortgage-free as soon as we could.  Every penny we earned we put towards our mortgage plus any extra money from our jobs and to our amazement managed to pay it off years before it was due.  Spurred on by the success, and by observing the rental opportunities in the City Centre we took out a mortgage on another apartment, let that to long term tenants and again paid off the mortgage quickly using all our Airbnb earnings plus our own individual savings.  From nothing, in a few years, we now had multiple properties and were completely mortgage-free.  This started a discussion of whether I could retire from work early, we decided I could and to my delight on Christmas Eve 2018, aged 56 I closed the shop for the very last time. 

Soon after discovering Airbnb back in 2010, we started to use it as guests ourselves.  Wherever we travelled to we would book Airbnb accommodation and often would find ourselves sitting on a veranda in some far-off land drinking cheap wine and discussing whether or not it would be possible to do this permanently?  Would it ever be possible to be in a position that would allow us the opportunity to travel around, in a nomadic style, living full time in Airbnb accommodation, not knowing month to month where we would be living next?  We were so used to living a ‘normal’ life, living in one place, being comfortable with our surroundings that it always seemed like just a dream, maybe a dream others have but the constraints of life never allow, yet,  unexpectedly, in July 2020 it  seemed that the time for us had at last arrived

It’s time to start selling our stuff! – More on that next month. Until then, thanks for reading. Hugs, Colin & Karyo x x

* New – Find us on Instagram @colin_karyo