I live in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, and am coming to London to take classes in Regents Park. I don't need much in the way of space; it's only just for me, and the location is what's important. If you have cats, fish or birds I'm happy to take care of them. Dogs might be a bit more difficult as I might be away for the entire day some days of the week. But we can talk about it...

Here are all the wonderful features of my flat:

• In beautiful Alameda, CA, in the San Francisco Bay area
• the flat is 850 sq. ft. in a huge Queen Anne mansion built in 1889;
distinctive and elegant.
• 1 mile from downtown Alameda (restaurants, cafes, bars, bookstores, etc.)
• 1 mile from ferry to San Francisco and Jack London Square in Oakland
• 1 mile from a mall with Trader Joe's and Safeway grocery stores, drug
stores, department stores, office supply stores, clothing, etc.
• Lovely flat island with beaches and parks, great for biking
• 7-minute drive to BART (the Tube) with parking garage
• 1 queen bed, 1 sofabed, 1 6-foot regular sofa (so can
sleep 4 easily)
• Gorgeous working fireplace in the Living Room/Office
• High-speed cable internet access on G4 Mac.
• Hardwood floors and soft woolen rugs
• Large TV with basic cable service in Living Room/TV Room
• Large Kitchen with antique gas stove (4-hob cooker with oven), microwave,
garbage disposal (no dishwasher, though)
• Bathroom with tub and shower, heat lamp, space heater, fan and window
• California mud room, which is a small anteroom off the back door. I keep
the refrigerator out there so the Kitchen is larger.
• Butler’s pantry with built-in cabinets that hold my large collection of
cookbooks
• Lovely gardens and landscaping; you see only trees out of the windows and
can barely tell that you're in a town
• Large corner-lot garden area with gardens, a grove of trees, and outdoor
cooking and eating areas
• Shared coin-operated laundry facilities in basement
• Have kids? Great playground 2 blocks away
• The grocery is an easy, flat ride, across the street from the beach
path that goes around the island
• There's a very nice cafe and a convenience store 1/2 block away
• Alameda is full of gorgeous old (by US standards) houses. You can walk
around my neighborhood and see many of the finer homes on the island.
• Lovely houseplants (could you water them for me?)
• Maid service once every 3 weeks

If you want to Google Maps the area, look for Central Avenue & Benton Streets, Alameda, CA, USA.

About the Area

I live in a lovely small town called Alameda. It's separated from Oakland by an estuary, and is only 3 miles across the San Francisco Bay from the city of San Francisco. There's a great ferry that stops both in Oakland at a waterfront area and in San Francisco. The BART (our Tube) is close by, and there are also buses that go into the City. You don't have to have a car, as the island is flat and easy to walk and bike around in. If you do have a car, the freeway is about 7-8 minutes away, and Oakland International Airport is only a 10-12 minute drive.

Alameda has many parks, the largest of which are beaches, and none is more than a mile or two away. There are bird sanctuaries here, so you'll see egrets and cormorants, clapper rails and a few different kinds of terns. Both the main island and Bay Farm Island (which isn't really an island anymore) have lagoons where ducks and wild Canada geese rest on their journeys. There's a lot of nature in this urban environment, a lot of green and a lot of water. It's simply wonderful.

There are lovely boutique shops and eateries in the central business district, which is only a mile from my flat. Antiques are popular here, and the first Sunday of every month there is a huge auction at the old naval base. They've also just renovated Alameda's Art Deco cinema, which is also an easy walk from home.

Alameda is the perfect Bay Area spot. You are close enough to enjoy all the excitement and fun of San Francisco, but can come home to a sunnier, warmer area that's more cozy and calm. You can also enjoy the varied entertainments of Oakland, including its own Chinatown, world-class jazz and blues clubs, great food, a fantastic farmer's market on Lake Merritt, and gorgeous regional parks in the hills that overlook the Bay. And of course Berkeley is just up the road, with its immense university, local craftspeople, and regional parks. A little longer of a trip (about 40 minutes) gets you to Silicon Valley, which not only is home to everything high tech and leading edge, but also houses a number of fantastic museums and hiking trails. Just past there is Palo Alto, home of Stanford University and a lovely shopping area.

One of the best things about the SF Bay Area is the culture. We are totally into our diverse populations here, and every expression of culture is available. Just name a country and you can probably find a restaurant, dance troupe, museum, cultural center, clothing shop or religious building from it somewhere within a few miles of my flat. Food is the most popular: you can find Thai, Vietnamese, Burmese, Laotian, Cambodian, Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, Japanese, Mexican, French, Spanish, Italian, Ecuadoran, Peruvian, Nicaraguan, Salvadoran, and on and on.

Music, too, is multicultural here. There are clubs in nearby Berkley and San Francisco that have bands from a different culture every night, and there are venues for folk, jazz, blues, swing and bluegrass, too.

Theatres abound, from Shakespeare to avant garde. And being so close to Hollywood we get first run movies very quickly here.

Alameda is a very safe town, with the feel of an older American time. You can walk around at night, and if you happen to leave your car unlocked, you don't have to run back to check it. Not that there isn't any crime, I'm sure there is, but it's much safer than San Francisco, parts of Oakland, or parts of London for that matter.

But that doesn't mean it closes up at dark. Often there's more going on here than in the neighboring towns. It's become quite a fun place to be.

I'm extremely neat and tidy, and will respect and care for your belongings. It's my hope that entering the community of home exchanges will bring the opportunity for making new friends and seeing more of the world.

I've done one exchange in London so far, and it was wonderful on both ends; we both enjoyed our time in each others' cities, and were happy with the state of our flats when we returned.

If you'd like to see a bit of my world as an astrologer, you can check out my website below. Note that there are always opportunities to improve it, so I'm really still in the process of creating it, but there's enough together to give you an idea of what I do.

I'd prefer to find someone who'd like to exchange for the entire time during each semester, but if that doesn't happen, then I will arrange to book consecutive shorter stays, but with no overlap.

I'd like to swap flats for 8-10 weeks at a time during the school year starting in January, 2011 and finishing at the end of June in 2011. I need to be in or near Central London, within a few minutes walking distance from either bus or tube. My classes are in Regents Park. It'd be great to be near a farmer's market, or good organic grocery store, if possible.

I'm Renee, a professional writer and astrologer. I'm working on my doctorate at the Centre for Psychological Astrology.

I've traveled to many places--Indonesia, Japan, Canada, England, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, and France, and have made friends all around the world. I'm a xenophile, and study culture in all its forms: music, art, food, religion, language. I enjoy learning languages and meeting people from various cultures.

There are no pets living in the apartment, but I do feed the birds and squirrels outside, as I am grateful to share the small grove of trees in the yard with them. (If you don't want to feed them, I can make arrangements for someone else to come round to do it.)

I am traveling on my own, and so need a place only large enough for myself. (My apartment, however, can fit up to 4 people comfortably, with two people sleeping on the couchbed.)

English, Français