Holiday like a celebrity

What’s even better than being a celebrity? Holidaying like one, of course. Lavish homes with celeb connections can be found for the asking on vacation rental sites now. Some of them are available all year round whereas others are pitched for extra special reasons, such as Ronaldinho’s Rio de Janeiro mansion for $15,000 a night during the World Cup. Novelist Anne Rice’s love for baroque furnishings is evident in her 5,000-sq-ft Florida beach house; cooking legend Paula Deen’s sunny home on Tybee Island comes equipped with a gourmet kitchen and a personally signed copy of one of her books as a souvenir for guests; Houdini’s meticulously restored mansion on Hollywood Hills has memorabilia from his performing days; and in the same neighbourhood is the house where filmmaker Orson Welles wrote Citizen Kane with Rita Hayworth by his side. Most such homes have minimum stay stipulations and can be booked via airbnb.com and homeaway.