The Good, The Bad and The Ugly…
The Good..the place location wise to see the city is great. So many great restaurants within 10 min walk. All the attractions close by. The price fits what you get, which is a basic unit to stay in. The unit is remodeled IKEA style. Kitchen was stocked with everything needed to cook etc. with the exception of a spatula to cook eggs!? The neighbors are super nice and helpful when we couldn’t figure out which unit was ours..
The Bad..finding the actual unit in the building. It’s on the third floor, which was never told to us. The building itself is so dark inside that you can’t read the names to figure out which one was the one you rented. For future guests is the one with the British Flag doormat. The host by far is the worse experience we’ve had. We got to the unit and the construction noise was so bad, like mind numbing bad, jackhammering for hours. I reached out to Riva to ask him what time construction starts and ends in Lyon and he didn’t know or even make an attempt to find out. He didn’t even bother to maybe ask around and circle back with me. We had to work while there and the internet was absolutely horrendous. Speed tests shows how bad. Download was fine but upload..forget about it. The internet might be fine for emails etc but if you need to do a zoom call or upload items to a website you’ll be doing it all day. The building’s main door handle to get out to the street is broke so my fingers got pinched twice just trying to leave.
The Ugly.. the unit is on an alley with a children’s play yard next door and when I tell you adults and kids are out until midnight that is not an exaggeration. It also starts at about 7am so basically no good sleep is had, which leaves me to my next point. The mattress is so soft my husbands sciatica has flared up. It needs to be replaced. Thank god it rained the entire time we were there, if it had been it’s normal hot weather time we would have died. The place is super stuffy, really needs a ceiling fan installed and the portable AC is a joke. It’s unusable so if you think of it’ll be fine it absolutely will not be. He doesn’t have the type of windows that allow for a portable unit.
Overall for people who want a place to crash and don’t care about the small things then you’ll be fine but if you need to work all day and are there long periods it’s just not that great. We aren’t picky people at all but when I have to go buy paper towels just to leave the unit clean that’s problematic. We ended up buying laundry detergent which we left for the next people. It’s the small things that really mean a lot to the travelers like us. Did we call the host and complain absolutely not bc at the end of the day he probably wouldn’t have cared. This is the first host that didn’t check in with us and ask if everything was acceptable and if we needed anything. Very aloof and most uncommon for us. We’ve been traveling in France for the past month and this was a huge departure of our last experiences but you can’t win them all.