“We have just come back from a great exchange with Irina and Joost and their children in Antwerp. The house is beautiful - large, characterful and stylish, and located in a very gracious and pleasant inner district of Antwerp. Irina and Joost were excellent hosts and very easy indeed to deal with throughout. Antwerp is a very fine city, with many attractions including from medieval, Art Nouveau and contemporary eras. The whole region is great for families - so many excellent parks, zoos, theme parks, child-friendly museums and other attractions. We were very happy to have chosen this exchange.”
Large city mansion with garden in the city center
Large city mansion with garden in the city center
Joost
Joined
Jun 2012
Last login
Over a month
Response rate
Excellent
Ratings are based on the speed and percentage of swap requests replied to
Want to contact this member?
Start your two-week free trial to chat to other members
Learn more about How it works
Added to shortlist
This home is in your shortlist. To access your shortlist click the icon in the navigation
Add to shortlist
This home is not yet in your shortlist
- 7 Bedrooms
- Sleeps 12
- 3 Bathrooms
About our home
Our house is a renovated (mostly by ourselves) late 19th century city mansion, with a large living/eating/open kitchen area of about 65 m2 with a fireplace, five bedrooms, a study/spare bedroom with double bed, a second living room with a fire place, a wellness area, a play attic for children, a large veranda (32m2), a roof terrace (12m2) and a south-oriented garden of about 100m2, closed in with whitewashed walls. The garden has a terrace corner and a barbecue for the grown-ups and a swing for the children. The first floor has a large bathroom with shower and tub, downstairs there is a toilet. The second floor has a wellness space that includes a sauna, rain shower, a bath tub and a toilet. The sousterrain is a more or less separate floor, with a bedroom, a bathroom and toilet plus an open laundry space including a wine cellar underneath. We are open for exchange of the car as well, but in case we opt for leaving by car, our garage place is available, too. We leave at your disposal two bikes with child seats and two (small) child bicycles plus, if needed, an add-on bike that can be pulled by one of the adult bicycles. When it is sunny, even in case outside it is not warm, our veranda can become an ad-hoc subtropical splashing pool if you just inflate a swimming pool for the children.
Hopefully you may find our home as comfortable as we find it ourselves.
Features
- Main home
- Central heating
- Cable TV
- Dish washer
- Washing machine
- Balcony
- Equipped for kids
- Parking
- Garden
- Car optional
- No smoking
- Wifi
- Pet-friendly
Joost's reviews
As a host (3)“This was a fantastic swap! Joost and his wife were terrific to communicate with all the way through the process, from first contact until inside each other's homes, and I am certain that they are very nice honest genuine people (unfortunately we haven't met)! Their home in Antwerp is amazing - the house covers four floors (including the basement) with six separate sleeping areas, three separate bathrooms and four separate lavatories. Plus a wonderful big kitchen, lounge-room and dining room joined space. So it is ideal for a group of friends, two families or just one big family! Joost's home is extremely comfortable, cozy, stylish and contains all mod cons. You will very much enjoy staying in this beautiful old renovated home, which is just a few minutes walk from a supermarket + newsagents + pharmacy in one direction and a lovely park with a tram stop on the edge for multiple tram routes (which will quickly take you into the city centre and all over Antwerp) in the other direction. We didn't really know what to expect from Antwerp, but it was a very enjoyable place to spend three weeks. The city is small, so can easily be traversed on foot or by bicycle (or tram) and thoroughly explored. Plenty of interesting museums, galleries, architecture (old and new), bars, cafes, restaurants, live music/dj venues, shops, churches etc. We loved the warm and atmospheric old brown cafes (small bars serving local beers and snacks) and found it hard to stay away from places such as Café de Kat, Pelikaan, De Ware Jacob and Den Engel. We also loved the extraordinary St Pauls Cathedral, just a little north of the main town square, an incredible restored church you can just wander into and even be there alone admiring paintings by Rubens and Van Dyck. Antwerp was a very pleasant surprise for us - so much to see and do in and around the broader city centre (including Borgerhout, a must visit area) and all within such an inspiring and authentic old Flemish European vibe. Then of course, there is so much to explore that is near Antwerp. If you swap cars with Joost (or just use the train) you can easily visit places like Brussels, Bruges and Gent as a day trip - all highly recommended! You can also do day trips to eastern Belgium and the southern Netherlands. Plus of course it is very easy to make longer train trips to nearby cities such as London, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam etc, if you are visiting Antwerp from outside Europe. It is just one hour on the train from Antwerp to Brussels, a city which rewards two or three separate day trip visits, as there is so much going on there culturally. In summary, I cannot recommend doing a house swap with Joost & his family highly enough! We had a magical and memorable family holiday in their home (and car), their neighbourhood, their city and their country and I am certain that you will too. ”
“12 giorni ad Anversa in una casa grande, pulita, silenziosa, confortevole. A tre fermate dal centro storico, ad un passo dal supermercato e da tutto ciò che può servire.Una casa che ti fa stare a tuo agio, che ti dà sicurezza. Anversa è una città elegante, bellissima, che non ti stanca mai tanto è viva e piena di opere d'arte. Anversa ben collegata con le altre città del Belgio: Bruxelles, Brugge, Gant.. I padroni di casa sono persone speciali, gente per bene, rispettosi delle tue cose, rispettosi degli altri. Uno scambio impeccabile, che consiglio perché io stessa lo rifarei.”
More about us
-
We are a Dutch-Romanian couple with two young daughters (12 and 10 years old), living our lives in the mixture of three cultures and discovering new places every year. We travel less `lightly` than before the children and therefore we can appreciate the advantages of exchanging houses with people in a similar situation. We promise to take good care of your house, as we hope you will take care of ours. We would also be very thankful for the presence of guests who can feed our two cats when we are on holidays, but if the cats are inconvenient, we can make other arrangements for them. We are looking forward to your exchange propositions.
PS. We have exchanged houses for four summer holidays and four short trips so far, all lovely.
Swap availability
- White
- Open to offers
- Green
- Available
- Red
- Not Available
Where is it?
Neighbourhood
The house is situated in a quiet street a little off the bustling centre, but within walk/bike/short public transportation distance from it. The trams stop around the corner. At 50 meters (literally on the corner of the street) there is a parc with a playground, while there are supermarkets and all sorts of other shops 300 meters in the opposite direction.
Antwerp is well-known for its shopping area, rich cultural history and its architecture, but we would definitely recommend the new MAS museum (among many many others), the museum of fine arts, the delicacy market on Saturday, about a km from our house, the antique and fleamarket street, the large parks, domains, fortressess and castle routes in and around the city, the hip cafes or beer bars, the less visited art nouveau areas of the city, which are actually quite close to our place, the night life... In case the city interests prove not to be enough for a holiday, Brussels or Gent are about 40 minutes away by train, Rotterdam 1 hour by train, Cologne, Paris and Amsterdam 2 hours by train,London 3 hours, Bruges is a little over an hour and the closest beaches in Zeeland or the lakes in the Mol area can be reached in about 45 minutes as well. For a daytrip (with or without children) we also very much enjoy the large village museum in Bokrijk (+/- 50km). And we will definitely be thinking up more suggestions depending on your interests.
You may also like
Antwerpen, Vlaanderen, Belgium
Our home is a 100 years old traditional Antwerp house - old & modern at the same time, comfortable and spacious with many of the original features still...
Kraainem, Vlaanderen, Belgium
English description: (version française plus bas) Spacious 5br 3 brand new bathrooms home in Brussels, close to the subway, car in option, convenient to the...
Gent, Vlaanderen, Belgium
Our house, built in 2017, is perfectly located :) -It is at biking distance (about 2.5 km) from the city centre of Ghent. Ghent is a beautiful city, a must...