Bad location, messy place, dogs running loose
Anne is a friendly person. When I made her aware that there had been no hot water in the bathroom during my first week in the apartment, she engaged in solving this problem quickly. It turned out that the hot water tank serving the whole house needed replacement. This took a couple of days which was understandable.
These were the good things to say about my three weeks’ stay at Anne’s place. Here comes the rest:
The location is not good. The nearest supermarket is 2,5 km away, the beach is not close either (you have to walk fast to make it to the beach in 15 minutes) and there is a busy road with quite heavy traffic, no cycling lanes and no pedestrian lanes outside the gate. In other words: You cannot do much by foot from this place, and a bicycle may not be enough. I rented a bicycle at a bike shop and got around well, but it requires a good level of fitness and courage to tackle the roads without cycling lanes.
The Wi-Fi is very weak and unstable. This was not a major problem for me as I have free data within the EU, but it was a surprise that the Wi-Fi was so bad.
The apartment and the surroundings do not really comply with the photos used to present the apartment. The furniture both inside and on the terrace are old, in some instances close to coming apart, several glasses in the cupboard were half broken, half of the forks were crooked etc., etc. The whole house appears dilapi-dated, and the nice garden that you are presented with on the front photo of Anne’s Airbnb advertisement is the neighbor’s garden, not Anne’s. Just as the house appears dilapidated, the front garden that you will need to pass to get to the stairs leading up to the apartment was during my stay a depressing mess of old furniture, stuff lying around, a broken car and - from my arrival until three days before checkout - increasing poodles of dog shit. Anne has a friendly and quiet old chow-chow dog that do not appear to be taken out for walks but runs loose in the garden around the house including the front garden between the gate and the stairs to the apartment. The dog therefore leaves it’s poos in the garden, and the front garden was apparently it’s favorite place for this during my stay. After removing the dog shit a few days before my checkout, Anne left me a voice message saying that I should have told her about the poodles of dog shit so she could have removed them before noticing them herself. Well maybe. But I wanted to maintain a good relationship with her, and I could not get myself to say: ‘can you please remove your dog’s poodles of shit’. Moreover, I really think it is on her to attend to and keep the parts of the property that Airbnb guests need to pass in good order.
Broken down hot water tank dealt with and doggie’s poodles now removed, I was assuming that my last days as an Airbnb guest at Anne’s place would be calm and uneventful. Not so. A dog belonging to the boyfriend of Anne’s daughter was now also let to run loose in garden. This dog was not old and quiet, it was instead a very lively - in fact hard to control - and frightening dog. When the dog was left out in the garden there was no way to avoid it if I wanted to leave or enter the apartment. After having escaped from my first scary and un-pleasant meeting with the dog, I wrote to Anne and asked that she either keep the dog on a leash or inside her house. Her reply back was ‘yes, yes, off course’, but when I was leaving for the beach the next morning, Mr. New Dog was again running loose in the garden :-(( This lead to an oral exchange of views with Anne and her daughter’s boyfriend where I repeated that the dog was frightening me and I therefore asked them to keep it away from me.
Had this happened earlier than on the last day before my departure, I would have moved out immediately. It is unacceptable to let a dog like that run around loose when you have clearly been made aware that it is fright-ening your visitor.
All in all, this apartment was a disappointment even though it is still my view that Anne is a friendly person.