My third experiment was to determine what you give up when you rent a house that costs only $43 per person per night. The answer: a villa. Casa Magdalena, in the little village of Saleres, is more town house than country estate. Unlike the properties I rented in Italy and the Caribbean, which had the same number of bedrooms but cost more than twice as much, Casa Magdalena has no grounds, no lawn, no picture-postcard panoramic views. Its several terraces look out onto pretty hillsides, but the vistas are marred by the blemishes you get when you're in a town location: utility poles and wires, rooftops in disrepair, the main square that doubles as the town's parking lot. Inside, the house was newly restored, spotlessly clean, and charming without being cutesy, but the absence of certain modern comforts and services left me frustrated. There was no land-line telephone, no indoor cell-phone reception (the only place you could get reception was on the roof terrace two flights up), no computer or Internet access, no central heating (there were radiant panel heaters, but we couldn't turn the heat up all the way because it would have blown the electrical fuses), and no clothes dryer. The farmhouse-style kitchen was cozy, but I wished it had a microwave, foreign-appliance instruction manuals that I could decipher, a self-igniting gas stove (rather than burners you light with matches), an oven with more than one rack, and pot holders for when old-fashioned metal pan handles grew blisteringly hot. The bathrooms sparkled with pretty tile work but had no shower curtains (a must when you combine small boys with handheld shower wands), washcloths, or bath amenities.

The towels and bedding were plush, however, and the kitchen was well stocked with basic supplies, and by my third or fourth day at Casa Magdalena, I was starting to enjoy the simple life. I began to like being disconnected from my e-mail and felt virtuous about all the energy I was conserving (by air-drying laundry, for instance, and heating only certain rooms). Most of all, I welcomed the opportunity to show my children a world where orange juice comes from a metal handpress, not Super Safeway. In short, Casa Magdalena gave us an appreciation for the local way of life—and isn't that one of the benefits of renting a house rather than staying in a hotel? Lesson three: Online villa descriptions list the features of a house but not those it lacks, so it's crucial to inquire about every creature comfort you might take for granted, and to book through an honest, detail-oriented villa rental agent with thorough knowledge of the property. The agent I used, Maxine Harrison of Elysian Holidays in London, knows Casa Magdalena so well that at first she tried to steer me toward a grander country estate: El Cortijo del Pino, five minutes down the road in the village of Albuñuelas. Now that I've seen the five-bedroom Cortijo, with its lush gardens and panoramic views, I agree with Maxine that it is more suitable for the typical Condé Nast Traveler reader—and, at $3,126 per week in February (which works out to $89 per bedroom per night), is an even better value for the money than Casa Magdalena—but I could not possibly have let my two whirling dervishes loose there. I would have been constantly worried that they'd break the antique furniture, the expensive ceramics, the family heirlooms. I needed Casa Magdalena, where the plates are from Ikea and there was little damage the junior commandos could do.