I will start with the positives. The apartment is in a wonderful location. Close to metro, restaurants and shops, but very quiet at night. It is also a nice, open space inside, calm and inviting. The host, Elena, was very responsive to messages on AirBnB app.
There were some negatives. When we first arrived I noticed a lot of big, black mold along the seams of the shower which I personally couldn’t abide taking a shower with that. I found some cleaner under the kitchen sink and scrubbed at the mold. It was much better after but the mold has seeped under the calking and was impossible to clean completely. For the price and description of the apartment I was not expecting this. The calking probably needs to be removed, the mold completely cleaned out and then the seams re-calked in the shower to fix the issue. The stairs to the loft bed and bathroom are very narrow so you must be careful when traversing. The bathroom sink was backed up and drained slowly, as did the shower drain. We stayed 4 nights and had our friends join us for the last 2 nights. Adding two guests was an extra charge we were not anticipating. There were also a lot of personal items in drawers and cabinets. However, there is an empty closet with drawers for exclusive use. These negatives were minor to us. The biggest issue is the day our friends arrived the water backed up. There happened to be a large bucket under the kitchen sink that the overflowing water could run into which we set up to catch the water. We had to empty the bucket continuously the last 2 days of our stay. We had to use water sparingly because every water use (except the toilet) had a one-to-one relationship with the water overflow bucket. The main water drainage pipe seemed to be completely blocked. This meant showers were water on. Water off. Soap up. Water on to rinse. Water off. This quick, limited shower almost filled the bucket entirely. Using the laundry was out of the question. Luckily our friends are of good humor and we can joke about our weekend in Paris as the Bucket Brigade. The plumbing issue happened the last 2 days of our stay. We advised day 3 as soon as the kitchen floor flooded with water but nothing could be done that day. The caretaker of the building tried to fix the problem on the last day/night of our stay, day 4, but was not able to fix. Our apartment had the caretaker, the host and our host’s friend there much of the time so was not usable/private the second half of our last day. We looked for a nearby hotel with 2 rooms for the last night so we could have good showers before leaving the next morning for the airport but couldn’t find anything. We asked the host to consider giving us a partial credit for our stay given the situation with the plumbing but never heard back. She did give us a bottle of nice champagne prior to trying to fix the plumbing for our troubles, which we couldn’t take with us on the plane so gave to our friends. It was a nice gesture but since the plumbing wasn’t fixed it really was a frustrating last 2 days. They also asked after we left if we remembered putting anything down the sink. That is a no. We did not let anything go down the sink. We requested a refund for 2 days through AirBnB (less the cost of the champagne) since there was no response from the owner within 72 hours of our request. We at least got a little back (not the full 2 days requested).
Bottom line, hopefully normally a nice place to stay and plumbing issues were just a one-off.