I've been traveling over the past year and mostly staying in Airbnb accommodations. They're such a far cry from any hotel. You get to live like a local. You get a friendly local contact. You get to experience so many different living conditions, from tiny rooftop apartments to sprawling 3-story family homes to cool stone rooms in buildings that must have been around since the 12th century. You get to see all the myriad ways different people decorate their homes. You can cook. You can work. You can leave whenever you want. Sometimes you even get to play with the owner's pets!

I've had to stay in hotels a few times over the course of my travels and it's just been a drag in comparison. No matter how tasteful they are, hotel rooms just feel like prison cells with their kischy decor, activity binders, and 1970's televisions. They're cold, clinical spaces that that exist in a sort of diorama dimension outside the jurisdiction and influence of the real world. And they're more expensive, too.