The short version: Great location, made everything easy. Spotless and new. Small, but you’ll get used to it. Everything works! At the end of each day, I was so happy to be able to just head for Flinders Station, and I’d be home. Good spot, and the best communication with a host, maybe ever. The long version: This is a micro-apartment. Bigger that a ship’s birth but that’s the comparison that comes to mind. It’s the classic trade-off, location for space. It is at the heart of tourist Melbourne, and couldn’t be easier to travel from. The interior is fresh and new, cunningly designed to make enough space for everything. Because of the size, shelf space and surfaces are at a premium. There’s a story about a writer I like, who wrote for a time in an apartment so small that he had to put his books on the bed to write, then move the books to the desk to sleep. It’s a little like that. Debbie’s prepared it like a hotel. There’s a lovely welcome tray when you arrive, and towels beautifully folded. They will have to go on the floor. That’s one reason, I think, that Debbie keeps the apartment shoe-free. You need those floors to be clean. There are small useful squares of wood on the wall as nightstands that are good at holding anything wallet-sized or smaller. The city noise from eight floors below is minimal, not a problem at all. However, the first night only, the noise of the refrigerator’s compressor kicking in now and again runs from a low grinding drone to a cell phone vibrating sound and these can rouse you from sleep. Also, the neighbor’s pleasant soft beeping alarm goes off at six, muffled but audible through the wall. You may want ear plugs to help with those. I have to say though, that was only an issue the first night… traveler’s jitters, maybe. The TV is basic, no ESPN, too bad for me hoping to watch the US Open tennis. Wi-fi works well, but be advised that you will have to log in everyday, and data is somewhat limited. If you were hoping to end your evening with that episode of Twin Peaks you missed via your Showtime online subscription, well, in deference to the data plan, you can’t. Debbie advises against all live streaming. The kitchen has a half fridge, a cooktop, and a fantastic two drawer Jetsons-like small dishwasher that holds the clean dishes and bloops and bleeps when you open it in a captivating way. The whole place is a clean, crisp all-white Ikea melamine and faux-marlbe countertop dream. I’m teasing a little, but it’s really quite pleasantly done. The window is a nice near square, and reminds me of a New York apartment. The view is a like a modernist painting – a set of crosscrossing building slices, light slanting across them in interesting ways. In the distance, if you look straight out, you see the big...