My daughter and I had a week’s stay at Hyla’s place. It is on a safe and charming residential street in Little Italy. The apt is a full suite on the first floor of the house where Hyla’s family stay on the second.
Hyla is a very responsive host. My questions got answered often within an hour, sometimes in minutes. The location is good—not close to subway as it’s a quiet street, but the main street Bloor is just 3 blocks north, which hosts a good number of Japanese, Korean restaurants among other things. Check-in was straightforward and smooth.
in the spirit of honest and accurate review, there had been a few inconveniences though, which Hyla tried her best to solve:
The thermometer/temp control is not in the apt, but in Hyla’s apt upstairs, so if we want to adjust the room temperature, we need to write to Hyla, which is not the most convenient. She and her nanny were very quick to help. However, in the first two days, the apt was still quite cold for us even after they adjusted the heating. Partially because we flew from a +20 degree whether right into minus 5-10 degrees in Toronto, when the city saw its first big snow this year; partially because there is a window airconditioner in the living room which let in strong currents of cold air. That was solved on the third day when Hyla’s husband helped to remove the air-conditioner from the window and closed up the window properly, which stopped the strong currents of cold air coming into the room. The apt was quite warm in the following days.
Another thing we noticed is that there are no microwave or dishwasher in the kitchen. This is accurate in the apt description so it was my bad to neglect that and just assumed there are such amenities available. It was inconvenient for us to reheat any food, but again, that was my negligence. Separately the water kettle provided didn’t work so I used a pot to boil hot water for tea during the whole week.
One thing that didn’t get solved was that WiFi was quite spotty during our stay. Not sure if this was something noticed by previous guests but somehow it quite an issue during our stay. Often time I couldn’t send or receive emails on my phone so I needed to fall back on my international data roaming plan. It is nice that there’s a big TV in house and Netflix is available; however it can buffer 4-5 times during a 20-30min show due to weak WiFi signals, if not more often. So frankly speaking WiFi was a bit frustrating. Hyla did try her best to help by rebooting the router a couple of times (the router is upstairs in Hyla’s home, not in the apt), but that didn’t seem to solve the issue during our stay unfortunately.
We’ve stayed in Airbnb apts across multiple continents and we value reading honest and accurate reviews which was the reason I described the above in good detail.
Overall despite the above, I don’t want to bias anyone—Hyla’s apt is very nice to stay and we like the neighborhood very much. Hyla is very helpful and responsive as a host. All said above is that there are some minor issues to take note/fix, which would have perfected the stay for us. I would still give a 9/10 for Hyla’s place. Thanks for hosting, Hyla!